


The Darkest Hearts

by Shtare



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, The Darkest Minds Series - Alexandra Bracken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Darkest Minds AU, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Language, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Maternal Violence, Mind Meld, Neil is Orange, POV Andrew Minyard, Past Rape/Non-con, Suicide, Swearing, Torture, Wholesome Twinyards, andriel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 63,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19354414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shtare/pseuds/Shtare
Summary: “Aaron, what the fuck - you just killed a man! A cute man!”“I’m fine,” Neil snarled, “just get my bag.”“Oh god,” Nicky cried, “this is a disaster, we’re murderers.”“I’m fine,” Neil said, again.“You heard him, Nicky, he’s fine,” Aaron clipped.Neil Josten was already living in his own personal dystopia when kids started dropping dead en masse and the rest of the world caught on. 98% of the kids under fourteen died, and the rest were deemed too dangerous for civil society. Neil was one of the ones that never got sick. Instead, he started falling into the mind of anyone he touched. It was getting harder for Neil to claw his way back out.Death had to be better than living as an Orange.The Darkest Minds AU Andriel





	1. Chapter 1

Neil was so busy looking behind him that he failed to notice the black van in the dark of the night. 

The parking lot was unlit because the local power grid was out. No streetlights to reflect off the once-shiny black paint. 

Neil was running full tilt when he bounced off the side paneling and cracked his head on the pavement. The pain was blinding, white spots danced in his vision. Neil tried to get up, and only managed to roll over, his face digging into the pavement. 

He needed to run. He needed to move. He needed to stand the fuck up because they were coming for him. 

Neil was being hunted. 

He could hear the echo of their shouts and weapons - jangle and clink of guns and knives punctuated with every pounding step.

His father’s people found him, and they were gaining ground. The same trio that followed him from Anatolia. Neil lingered too long after he torched the motel and ditched the phones. He ran himself ragged on a sleepless, jagged road down the spine of California and crossed into Arizona. He was afraid to stop long enough to resupply on food. 

Two days later, the tattered remains of the US government bombed Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Major cities reduced to rubble. Unfathomable casualties. The remains of Mom’s ashes incinerated in the blast.

Neil thought he was cursed by the lottery of birth, and when IAAN hit, he knew it. 

Kids started dropping like flies, and violence ensued. 

Western society was not equipt for such dramatic drop-off, the elimination of almost an entire generation. Two years after the first diagnosis, 98% of the population under the age of fourteen was dead. The childless parents turned on each other and society collapsed in on itself like a dying star. Neil was already living in his own dystopia of two, and it seemed like the rest of the world had finally caught up to the cruelty and indifference of people.

Neil was one of the ones that never got sick. 

Mom had been even more tense than usual after the first stories broke out in the news and before the national broadcast system went down. She watched him with intense, furious eyes, like she was daring him to get sick and die on her after everything she sacrificed just to keep him breathing. 

In Neil’s opinion, death would have been preferable to what happened to him.

Neil slept in the same bed as Mom every night. It was the only way she could be sure that he was safe. Neil doubted that she slept. If she did, he rarely saw it. If she was not patrolling the perimeter or looking out the window, she was at his back, staring into the shadows. 

He was a burden. 

He resented himself for the hell his Mom’s life became because of his mere existence. He hated that his face was so recognizable. Colored contacts were increasingly difficult to come by. He was forced to wear the same pair long past the expiration date. After the third infection, Mom figured it was more trouble getting penicillin than having blue eyes. 

The day Alex threw out his last pair, she stopped looking him in the eye. He addressed the air in front of her or the space over his shoulder when she spoke to him. Hair dye was easier, and Neil hoarded it like gold. Blue eyes were more common than red hair. 

More common than survivors of IAAN.

When the truth of the abilities came to the surface, kids started getting taken to “rehabilitation camps,” for their own good and the safety of society. 

Unfortunately for the federal government, most parents preferred not to hand their children over to labor camps.

Kids were still taken, forcibly, if their parents would not give them up. 

Dissenters died. Abettors died. Allys died. 

Everyone lost, and so decided to take from someone else.

The most lucrative job in post-IAAN America was as a federally contracted bounty hunter. 

Suddenly, they had an additional problem on their hands, on top of staying one step ahead of his father’s men. 

Tracers were paid to capture kids that evaded the collections or escaped the camps. They had an entire online database dedicated to capturing any registered kids, and the adults left willing to help them. Mom and Neil were used to living on the run. Neil always felt eyes on him, but it was a different sensation when he was the only person under thirty years old on the street. As the disease progressed, Neil stuck out in a crowd more and more, subject to endless grieving and furious eyes judging him guilty for the accident of his survival. The greedy hands of tracers, desperate to trade him in for their next meal ticket - or just because they liked it. The truly perverted came out of the woodwork when the bureaucratic infrastructure, economy, and telecommunications of a vast majority of the nation went dead. It seemed to Neil that the rest of the world had finally caught on to the cosmic joke of survival. Nobody lives long, save the evil. 

Neil did not have it in him to kill and he was not ready to die, so he ran. 

For the last year, he ran alone. 

In his backpack were food and water. Two changes of clothes, a suture kit, some gauze, and the gun Mom used to kill herself. 

He remembered that night vividly. A dingy pink one-story motel, thin curtains, single table, a lone twin bed. They were squatting, the locks easy to pick, and most hotels and motels were vacant any these days, as the number of people willing to pay for a room dwindled. They relied on the manager being too lazy or too wasted to check around. 

Mom and Neil used the last of the hair dye in the sink. They were stingy with it, but everything comes to nothing eventually. Dread filled him as he prepared to count the days until the dye was not enough to conceal his father's legacy. As his hair dried, Neil sat at a rickety table and checked the weapons. He was exhausted from running for more than a day with no food. 

He fumbled reloading the clip of the handgun. 

A few bullets fell to the floor. 

She hit him for the fumble, a mistake that could have cost him his life in a real crisis. She made him empty and reload the clip until his fingers were too weak to hold the bullets.

Neil fell into an uneasy sleep in the early hours of the afternoon. Laying back to back with Mom as he tried to shake off the adrenaline of another close call. The tracers had been getting bolder recently, and more than a few had taken a shot at him in the span of that day. They needed to flee through the woods on foot to escape, Mom had dogged Neil’s steps the whole way, whispering urgently in his ear. 

Mom held onto him so hard, Neil was sure he got new bruises. 

Neil had a dream, except he does not dream. 

In the dream, he imagined that he was insignificant and unafraid. He walked down the street, invisible to all eyes, blending into the crowd, seen but soon forgotten. Still, he walked hidden in his Mom's long shadow as she walked in front of him, pulling him along by the wrist. Her eyes were hidden but he felt their invisible weight nonetheless. Guilt and self-loathing consumed Neil from the inside out. He was the worst thing to ever happened to his mother. She would probably be home, in England, if he had never been born. His father might not have chased her, because she would have stolen the money. Neil wished she would forget him and move on with her life. He wanted her to be free of the burden of her son. 

Neil woke up because he couldn't breathe. 

He opened his eyes and saw Mom’s terrified face. Mom didn't express many emotions and fear was never one of them. She looked at him the way she looked at Nathan when the three of them lived in that big house on the outskirts of Baltimore. Neil remembered the way her guarded eyes followed Nathan out of a room, the way her shoulders settled when he was gone, and she was relieved. 

Neil's Mom squeezed the life out of him as he scrambled for purchase, terrified and confused. 

She may hit him for mistakes that endangered their lives, but she would never kill him. The last seven years of her life have been about nothing but keeping Neil alive. 

Neil met her eye and she screamed in his face, enraged. 

Neil’s lungs burned. 

Mom’s hands wrapped tighter around his neck. 

Neil struggled the furtive writhing of the trapped and dying. Sheer desperation and Neil’s slight advantage in body mass allowed him to unbalance Mom long enough to break her grip and throw her off. 

Mom bounced off the corner of the bed and hit the floor, hard. 

She was up in a second and coming right back for him, full of deadly intent. 

Neil put the bed between them. The twin mattress was tiny, a meager protection at best. 

He called her by her alias and she looked wild and confused. He called her by her name and she looked at him like he was her enemy. Like he was untrustworthy. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Mom,” he only dared call her that in private and on rare occasions, “what’s happening right now?”

He needed her to explain it to him. She always explained everything, giving him all the sordid details so he knew the fatal consequences of making a mistake. 

“Don’t call me that!” She screamed at him and kept screaming. 

Neil had never been so afraid. Mom never yelled. It was not safe to make noise or draw any attention. Even at her most furious, Mom's careful voice never rose beyond their small circle, in any place, at any time. 

“I don’t know you, I don’t know you!” 

She glared at him like passing strangers on the street glared at him. 

Fear. 

Loathing.

Pain.

Neil watched in morbid fascination as a single tear trickled down Mom’s cheek. 

“Oh god,” she said, meeting Neil’s eye and Nathan’s blue gaze, recognizing a part of Neil, a part of Nathan, if not who Neil was to her. He did not see her hit her head. She was not impulsive, not irrational, not crazy. She watched him with big, hollow eyes. 

“Is this hell?”

Dread. 

Panic. 

Sorrow.

Resolve. 

She put the gun in her mouth - the same one he loaded last night.

Neil realized what she was going to do and threw himself across the mattress. He grabbed for her arm, trying to wrestle the gun away. 

He was a second too late. 

Her blood was a warm spray on his face and neck. She was dead before her body hit the hotel floor for the second time, the sound heavier and more horrifying for being the last. 

Neil left her there, on that dirty motel carpet. It was too risky to move her. He would be seen. She would understand. She would have demanded no less. He used the last of the whiskey to douse the curtains, lit a match and watched the fabric light. Then, he slipped out of the bathroom window. 

Neil wished he was dead, but he kept moving. 

Hitchhiking was not an option for Neil, with his young face and short stature, so he ran, and walked when he was unable to run anymore. 

Stealing was not worth the name with nobody manning the counters. He was usually flush with food. 

As long as he stayed off the road, the tracers were largely not a problem. They were easy to avoid for Neil. Most of them were unemployed college graduates with a gun license and a diesel truck, announcing themselves with drunken laughter and the broken branches under their clumsy feet. Neil left his past behind when he receded from the city, once his shelter of anonymity, and took to the trees. 

Neil avoided people as much as possible. 

He followed a paper map down the spine of California and crossed into Arizona. The population was relatively low, better for hiding from skip tracers and his father's men. For finding stores empty but mostly unlooted. Neil walked more than he ran as he picked his way through Arizona. He kept to the trees whenever possible and strayed into towns only when absolutely necessary. He never lingered longer than ten minutes. He slept under abandoned cars. He was out in the open, but it became his only option once trees grew sparse and flatland stretched between urban centers. Occasionally, he found an unlocked car and managed a few hours of fitful sleep in the trunk. 

As open flatlands spread out further and further between towns, Neil's options for scavenging food and water dwindled down to large depot stores. Huge buildings with attached warehouses and bulk stock. Too big to keep an eye on an exit. It was too easy for someone to sneak up behind Neil. He was alone, with no one to watch his back. The shadows grew and stretched. The silence was menacing and dread suffused Neil’s body. 

Neil eventually broke in Millport, Arizona, and carefully made his way into the warehouse through the loading dock. He had ten minutes. Neil grabbed some block ramen packs spilled out from a box on the floor. He managed to find an entire floor-to-ceiling shelf dedicated to cases of bottled water and stuffed an armful in his bag. Neil crept up the aisle and peered out slowly, trying to see a hint towards medical supplies or sterilizing liquor. 

Neil heard the distinctive creaking of unique to the wheels of a shopping cart and turned. 

They were stopped in the middle of the aisle, with an empty cart, staring at him. Two men and a woman. The woman smiled and reached for her belt. 

Neil dodged a flash of silver. 

The throwing knife cut a groove in his arm instead of putting a hole in his chest. 

His father’s people found him. 

They could find him anywhere before the country collapsed. At the end of the world, it could only be easier. Safety was never a possibility. Rest was never an option. Escape was always just a waiting game -- a long-standing cat and mouse equation. The East Coast must be his father's paradise, his criminal enterprise undoubtedly expanding without any of the roadblocks of lawless America. Mom trained Neil to recognize the cold eyes and predatory steps, but they both knew that Nathan would only send his lieutenants out after such high-value prey. 

Lola Malcolm 

Romero Malcolm

Jackson Plank. 

He took off running, back towards the loading dock, the quickest route to the parking lot. Neil ran faster when he hit the pavement, dodging between abandoned cars and sprinting open stretches of asphalt. He leaped over a grass divider with a lone, scraggly tree. 

Three consecutive gunshots went wide. 

The van came out of nowhere, and Neil was on the ground

He heard alarmed shouts, not of satisfaction but fear, coming from the shadow that sprouted in front of him. 

Darkness consumed his vision and he went under the wave.

* * *

Neil woke up in the back of a moving vehicle. 

His hands were free. The relief was an endorphin rush that flooded his body with heat. These were not his father’s people if they left him unbound. Neil relaxed his muscles. His kidnappers, whoever they may be, spoke freely, thinking him unconscious. Two voices, both male. 

If Neil timed it right he could be out the back door before either of them realized he was awake. 

Neil has jumped from a moving car before, he could do it again. It was better than going along with the people that tossed him into their van. The van was moving, meaning there were three of them to Neil’s one. 

Neil cracked an eye open and was granted the sights and sounds of bickering. They were talking about him.

“Who the fuck is he?”

“I don’t know.” 

“And you brought him with us?”

“He was unconscious! I couldn’t just leave him there! I think he was being chased by tracers.” 

“You just better hope we don’t get caught because of him.”

“Aaron, you worry too much. Besides, he’s a cutie, and I could do with a little de-stressor.”

“Don’t be fucking gross.”

“Maybe sleeping beauty will wake for a kiss.”

Neil heard the lasciviousness in the stranger’s voice. His skin crawled. A second later, someone’s lips touched his - with tongue. Neil jerked like he was jumped with a car battery. He smashed the crown on his head into the person’s nose, and they fell back, howling in pain, blood gushing from his face. 

“Holy shit!”

Neil threw himself at the back door. 

He just popped the handle when someone grabbed the back of his collar. Neil considered the merit of letting the t-shirt strangle him. Eventually, he let go of the door to save his neck. The arm took advantage of the leeway and slammed Neil's back center on the floor of the van, losing him just as much air as the garrote. 

The one that wanted a piece of Neil he did not share was dark-skinned and fine-boned. Taller than the blonde that loomed over him, though that could have been Neil's diminished perspective. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” The stranger snarled, his gold eyes flashed. 

Neil managed to get a leg between them and kick the blonde in the chest. More like pushed him away with a leg.

Neil rolled to his feet and surveyed his surroundings. The space in the van was tight with three men trying to maneuver in the small, moving quarters. He needed to escape, but first, he needed his backpack. His backpack held everything he had. Panic spiked in Neil’s chest, and he could not help but look over his shoulder. He scanned the van for the familiar slouching green and found his bag sat up on the bench behind the one that touched him - it was upended and emptied out. 

“Looking for this?” The blonde, Aaron, held up Neil’s gun and leveled the weapon at Neil’s chest. He was clumsy and unsure, his finger trembling slightly on the trigger instead of resting on the barrel. Aaron was clearly unused to handling weapons. The posturing blonde knew enough to flick the safety off, but his angle was bad; too far from Neil’s chest to do permanent damage. Somehow, Neil was not comforted. A shot to the gut was just as fatal and twice as painful. The sneer of satisfaction on Aaron’s face was nauseating. 

Neil refused to contemplate what they planned on doing with him, trapped, and at their mercy. Neil fought against the wave of fury that told him to attack these men even though he was outnumbered and unarmed. When it came to fight or flight, it was a toss-up. Neil decided to abandon the backpack. He could get another. 

He needed to survive, first and foremost. He needed to get out.

Aaron now stood between Neil and the double back doors.

If there was no going out the back, he must leave through the front. 

Neil moved all at once, bodily launching himself between the front captain chairs. His wrist hit the dashboard at an odd angle and folded with pain. Nothing bad enough to stop him. He was faster than any of them, and something told him that Aaron was not going to shoot him. He now had both the opportunity of privacy and the incentive of his friend's injury, to justify Neil's death. Wounds can be deadly now that hospitals stand unmanned. That, and his supplies, were enough reason to kill Neil. 

The average person was hesitant to shed cold blood, and Neil was willing to rely on that. 

Neil made for the passenger door. He startled the driver in the process. The van swerved dangerously in its lane. The force of movement knocked Neil into the side of the driver's seat. 

“Watch it!” The driver shouted, struggling to right the van. 

Neil looked at the driver and met the alarmed stare of Kevin Day. The same Kevin Day that was the greatest rising star in Exy before IAAN destroyed organized athletics. The same Kevin Day that broke over a hundred kids out of a camp at Caledonia. Every tracer within a thousand miles was looking for Kevin Day. The bounty on his head was one of the highest on the platform. The same Kevin Day that stood next to Neil and watched Nathan hack a man to pieces. Neil had no more contacts or hair dye, leaving his true appearance to wave in Kevin’s face like a literal red flag. 

Kevin said nothing as his eyes widened. 

Neil caught a grip on the passenger’s side handle. The door gave way, and Neil threw himself out of the moving car. 

Neil tucked and rolled to minimize the damage but the car was still going at least 40 miles per hour when he hit the ground. He did not feel his skin tear on the asphalt. He only felt the wild panic of an animal caught in a trap. What were a few more scars next to getting captured? What was some road rash compared to death? Better to chew off an arm than lose his life. Better to bash his brains out on the road than go along with his kidnapper's plans. Blood dripped down Neil’s face, obscuring his vision. Neil tried to wipe the red away and get up at the same time. Running blind was a good way to get caught. He stumbled and went back down. Neil blinked against the red film obscuring his vision. 

The van skidded to a screeching halt. 

Neil heard a door slam.

Kevin came around the side of the van at a jog, staring wide-eyed at Neil and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he just stopped a car in the middle of the road. Neil looked around instinctively, waiting for his father’s people, or a tracer, or both to leap out from the treeline and grab Neil while he was incapacitated. Aaron and the letch jumped down from the back. They were pissed.

“That’s the last time Kevin drives.” Aaron was still holding Neil’s gun. Neil's assailant had both hands over his nose, trying to staunch the flow of blood. It was not broken. Neil did not hit him that hard. 

“My face,” he wailed, “my beautiful, beautiful face.”

“It was your own fault, Nicky.”

“Worth it,” Nicky winked at Neil. Blew him a bloody kiss. Neil’s stomach turned.

Neil started walking slowly backward and glance up the road, back the way they came. He had no idea where he was or how far they had taken him. He needed tog et off the road until he found somewhere to resupply. Neil had no time to mourn the loss of his backpack. He needed to move. Now.

Neil took off. He darted sideways, trying to get to the woods. 

He only got a few feet before Aaron started firing. 

Neil ran until a slug hit him in the leg. 

Finely tuned instincts, born from his mother’s fists, kept Neil from crying out as his leg buckled from underneath him and he hit the pavement for the third time in twenty-four hours. The bullet went through the meat of his thigh, missing the artery. Running would be a challenge, but at least he was not going to bleed out femorally. Even a shitty shot like Aaron could get lucky. 

Kevin appeared at Neil’s side and reached down to help him to his feet. Neil jerked away from Kevin’s hand. He would rather drag himself across the asphalt than climb into Kevin Day’s head. 

“Don’t touch me,” Neil snapped, partly from his own fear and partly out of concern for Kevin’s brain. He would be happy for Kevin to forget he ever met Nathaniel, but Neil did not trust himself, and the last thing he wanted to do was turn Kevin into a vegetable accidentally. Somehow, the idea of destroying Kevin Day was almost as sickening as the idea of getting caught by his father's people. 

“You look like someone I used to know,” Kevin whispered, his hands up like Neil was the one holding the gun. 

“Not my problem,” Neil hissed. Neil managed to rise to his feet and began to stumble what Neil deemed to be a minimum safe distance from Kevin Day. 

“What is your name?”

“Neil Josten,” he said, annoyed by Kevin's questions but answering nonetheless, the new alias on the tip of his tongue. 

“How are you here, Neil?” Kevin asked, his nose curled like Neil’s name left a bad taste in his mouth. Neil took great pleasure in ignoring him and assessing the damage to his leg. Kevin’s incompetent asshole and idiot sex criminal ran up to them. 

“Oh my god!” 

Nicky fell to the ground beside Neil, hands out like he wanted to help but had no idea how. 

“Aaron, what the fuck did you do? You just killed a man! A hot man!”

Aaron hung back. He still held the gun by his side, his face a shade of horrified. He paled further at the accusation and hurried to defend himself.

“He was going to run off and he knows what the van looks like, Nicky,” Aaron said, accusatory, “I was just trying to stop him.”

“Well, you stopped him, permanently! With death!” 

“It was an accident! I’m a crap shot —

“So you shot at him, hoping you’d miss? Aaron!”

Neil caught the t-shirt Kevin tossed his way and tied a tight vice around his wound. Now he really did need his bag. It took forever to find the stitching stuff he did have. 

“I’m fine,” Neil snarled, “just get my bag.” 

“Oh god,” Nicky cried, “this is a disaster, we’re murderers.”

“I’m not even maimed,” Neil said, again. "I'm fine." 

“You heard him, Nicky, he’s fine,” Aaron gestured to Neil. The two continued to argue back and forth. 

Over the incessant bickering, Neil heard the distinctive sound of a V8 engine roaring down the street. 

In the heat, the vague haze of gold horizon looked like a mirage. Neil blinked and saw a gold dodge charger roaring down the highway, headed straight for them, at incredible speed. Fast enough to splatter Neil like a bug on a windshield.

“Shit,” Kevin swore, “It’s Kathy.”

When Kevin pulled Neil to his feet. Neil let him, and the four of them ran-hobbled to the van. 

He was no match against even a tracer in his condition. Neil would mangle his leg if he tried to run on it. Were he not injured, he would have made it to the tree line and used the bad-touch trio as a distraction while he escaped. Running to stay one step ahead was one thing, running because someone was chasing you was something else entirely. No way a beat-up panel van had the horsepower to outrun a fucking sports car. Nicky slammed on the gas hard enough to throw even the able-bodied to the floor. Neil landed on his bullet wound and bit his tongue hard enough to bleed. The acrid bile of the chase rose in the back of Neil’s throat. 

They were speeding down the highway and it was not going to be enough. The others knew it too, judging by their sickly expressions. 

Aaron tossed Neil's gun to him without clicking off the safety. Neil caught it, locked it, and tucked it into his waistband. If Aaron was any more careless, he was going to kill them all by accident. Neil was not willing to die like that. 

“Kevin, help me,” Aaron said gruffly. 

Kevin cowered, shaking his head as he shivered with anxiety and terror. 

“Fuck you, coward,” Aaron snarled in disgust. 

“You,” Aaron snapped his fingers and pointed at Neil, “grab the back of my pants,” the disgust on his face told Neil he would rather be touched by any person other than Neil. Neil had no desire to touch any part of Aaron. His distaste must have been visible, because Aaron went red with frustration. 

“Just do it!”

Neil shimmied across the floor of the van, grabbed Aaron’s waistband with one hand and the van’s back bench with the other. Neil had no idea what was about to happen. He did not want to know what was about to happen, and he definitely did not want to be involved. Too late now, Neil supposed. Aaron pushed the back doors open like he didn’t just threaten to shoot - actually shot - Neil for the same. 

The charger was only a few yards back. A silver pistol protruded from the driver-side window. 

Neil barely had time to yell out a warning before the shots rang out. Neil flinched at the sound of a bullet breaking glass. The van’s windshield did not shatter, but it did have a new hole. 

“Jesus Christ, she’s trying to kill us, guys!” Nicky screamed from the front, talking sense for the first time since Neil met him. The van bobbed and weaved in its lane, Neil could not tell if it was a poor attempt at evasion or plain shitty driving. The serpentine motions were nauseating and made it harder for Neil to keep Aaron from falling out of the van. 

“Goddamn it, Nicky,” Aaron braced a hand against the roof, holding his other hand out, palm up, “keep it straight.”

“Oh cousin, you know I can’t do that,” Nicky crooned with no sense of danger. They all ignored him. 

The air shifted subtly, wind picking up, though the trees remained still. Neil felt a prickle at the back of his neck. 

“Don’t drop me, asshole.” Aaron leaned out of the van, and Neil tightened his hold. Aaron’s eyes glowed blue, and the forest came alive. Leaves, sticks, and dead tree trunks launched from the tree line to pelt the Charger. The car swerved but managed to stay on the road. Aaron’s face was contorted in concentration, his whole body tense. The van was losing ground and their pursuer was undaunted by Aaron’s display.

“Faster,” Neil called to the front. Getting caught was not an option. “Faster!”

“Hold on,” Aaron said, just before the asphalt of the highway cracked and split open, peeling up the asphalt. 

The Charger swerved to avoid the hazard. 

Not fast enough. Neil knew as certainly as the driver. 

A front tire caught in a fissure, and the charger flipped end over end. With the speed and momentum, the crash would have hit them if Aaron has not pushed the car off the road from mid-air with a sweep of his arm. The pursuing vehicle landed upside-down, perched on the incline of the embankment. Neil hoped the driver was dead. He was disappointed with himself in more ways than one, but he really did not want to die, and that was too close. 

Neil flopped against a bench and breathed heavily, utterly exhausted. 

Aaron shut the back doors and Nicky managed to drive in a straight line.

The world slid away and Neil was not afraid, for the moment.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil gets along with his new friends and tries not to get killed in the process.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> Enjoy,

The four of them settled into an uneasy silence in the wake of their near-miss. Neil played over the worst-case scenario in his mind for if the tracer - Kathy - had managed to capture him and post his picture on the tracernet. A huge digital red flag for his father’s people to follow directly to him. Kathy might not be with the Butcher’s people, but she was prepared to deliver him into his father’s hands, however indirectly. 

Nicky was shaking so badly he had to be swapped out of the driver’s seat. Kevin still cowered against the back of the passenger's seat, trying to make himself as small as possible. Aaron took the wheel, on sufferance, while Nicky retreated to crouch opposite Neil in the back. Nicky watched Neil with a mixture of pity and guilt, both of which were useless to Neil. 

“So Neil,” Nicky sad smiled, “how’s your leg?”

“It’s fine.”

Neil’s leg throbbed in time with his heartbeat, throbbing pulses emmination from the hole bored in one side of his leg and out the other. The tourniquet numbed his foot. He needed to disinfect and stitch the wounds, and hope to hell nothing internal was affected. Neil could sew the exit wound himself if he found a mirror. 

“And your face?” 

Neil forgot he tore up his face on the pavement when he landed. Only so much impact could be absorbed by a tuck and roll. He touched the wound, trying to assess the damage. Dried blood flaked off under his fingertips, provoking fresh, sluggish bleeding. Neil rifled through his bag, retrieved a pad of gauze, and pressed it to his cheek.

“It’s fine.”

“Can I get you a bottle of water?”

“I’m fine.”

Nicky went quiet after that. Neil was glad for a reprieve from his incessant talking. Kevin’s silence, on the other hand, was definitely unhealthy and he became more of a lost cause with every passing day. Kevin was close to hyperventilation and looked completely unhinged. Neil felt equal parts sympathetic and annoyed. Kevin’s anxiety bled into the air like a toxin, charging the small space with silent, high-strung tension. The air tasted like metal. The hair on Neil’s arms raised, a zap of static where his skin touched the metal of the van wall. Kevin’s eyes flashed back and forth from a fearful green to a teary gold. 

“Calm down,” Neil urged Kevin, “The car was flattened. She’s dead.” 

Kathy was dead because Aaron killed her from ten feet away. Aaron was the first Blue Neil had the meeting personally, but he heard rumors from Mom. Blues that waylaid tracers and broke kids out of camps, killing guards that got in their way, to become roving bands of teenage escapees. Neil thought they were just stories until Aaron turned Kathy’s car into a pancake. Technically, Aaron saved Neil’s life. Neil should thank him, but Neil was not the kind to be grateful. He was also distracted by the thigh wound that kept him trapped in this van with Kevin Day and his bumbling ensemble of assholes. 

“You don’t know that,” Kevin whimpered, “you can’t be sure she’s dead.” 

Kevin was right, but Neil would never admit to it. Neil had no idea if Kathy was dead. The car accident was no guarantee. Neil was just trying to keep Kevin from having a nervous breakdown. 

By rights, Neil never should have met these people. 

It was all Nicky’s fault. If he left Neil where he found him, Neil would not be in this compromised position. Neil rounded on him. 

“Now that the excitement is over with, let’s revisit the part where you fucking kidnapped me,” Neil snarled, leaning back against the side of the van, and feeling vindicated in his injury. “You may as well be tracers if you grab people off the side of the road. I was fine on my own and now you’ve dragged me into your blood feud with gun-happy Kathy.” 

“You were unconscious and tracers were chasing you,” Nicky whined. 

“It’s called saving your life, asshole,” Aaron croaked. He looked like shit. Ripping up the road and flipping the car must have depleted him. Neil wished his own mind were exhausted so easily. “You’re welcome.” 

“Considering you shot me right afterward, I don’t give a flying fuck,” Neil snapped back. These people burst into his life and tore it apart as surely as the bullet did his leg. He was not backing down, even if they did rescue him from his father’s people. Neil could not afford to be injured. His father’s people were no more than a day behind him. If he slowed down, he was as good as dead.

“I said it was an accident.”

“What are the chances of that?”

“Actually, over 90% of gun violence is accidental,” Nicky offered. 

“Incorrect,” Kevin said, “in pre-collapse America, the number one cause of gun violence was suicide.”

“Shut up, Kevin!” Neil and Aaron yelled in unison. 

Neil was never been more disgusted with his life. He needed to get away from these people. He also needed his fucking leg, and trying to run on it now would only make it worse down the line. If his leg was giving out from underneath him now, it would do the same later, probably when Neil needed to run the most. Neil was trapped in a moving van, in pain, and on edge. He lashed out because it was better than doing nothing. He’d thrash and rage rather than lay down and wait for death. Neil felt Kevin’s eyes boring into his back. 

“Actually, I change my mind,” Neil said with cavalier insistence, “let’s talk about Kevin.”

If Neil was going to get himself killed, he might as well go all-in. The Kevin Day he saw cowering on the floorboards was diametrically opposed from the Kevin that lived in Neil’s memories. The Kevin Day he remembered was talented, fearless, and unstoppable. The kind of person that could make Court straight out of college, or would have, if not for IAAN. The United States was a little too busy starving to death to care about leisurely past-times. Kevin Day without Exy was multiple shades of pathetic. Neil had little tolerance for moping. 

“Kevin Day, the hero that saved a hundred kids from Caledonia,” Neil injected scorn into his voice as doubt twisted his features. 

Kevin blanched like he was the one that got shot in the leg and was currently suffering from acute blood loss. Neil’s head was spinning and his stomach threatened to revolt, but he’d rather stare Kevin down than pass out cold.  
Neil did not kick puppies - unless they deserved it. 

He had an inkling that Kevin deserved it. 

“Somehow, the idea of you breaking out of a heavily guarded facility with nothing but your wits and some static electricity seems even less likely than Aaron shooting me by accidental. From what I’ve seen, you’re just a little bitch. Quite the fall from grace for the first son of Exy.” 

The former Raven looked away, contrite and pained. Neil struggled to hide his surprise. He expected some self-aggrandizing bullshit. A flash of the Kevin from the post-game interviews and talk-show appearances. Neil did not expect Kevin’s face to crumble in guilt. He gathered his legs against his chest and wrapped his arms around himself. Neil felt bad for prodding a sore spot, but not bad enough to cut Kevin a break, no matter how Neil’s every word seemed like adding insult to injury. Neil was not that cruel. 

“Hey!” Nicky said, showing some backbone, “that’s a little uncalled for.” 

“So is shooting someone with their own gun,” Neil said through his teeth, all bravado to hide his regret.

“Any chance you’d be willing to let that go? Bygones, and all that good stuff?”

“Give me my bag, let me out of this piece of shit van, and I promise I’ll think about it.” 

Nicky handed Neil his backpack, possessions haphazardly shoved back inside the worn canvas that held the whole of his life. Nicky handled the gun daintily, pinched between thumb and finger. Neil grabbed it before someone else got shot. Aaron rolled his eyes and proceeded to glare out the windshield. Kevin pointedly clicked the door-lock button. 

“Yeah, fuck you too.” 

Like Neil would jump out of a moving car twice in the same day. 

With his fate momentarily sealed, Neil got around to the problem of his leg.

“You’ve got a little,” Nicky winced, gesturing to his cheek and forehead. Neil touched his face and his fingers came away bloody. His face stung, but the skin was not fully torn away. It was just cosmetic. His leg was infinitely more important. Neil fumbled with the tourniquet knot for a moment, fingers weak from a sleepless night and a bad day. Nicky offered to help. Neil shot him a chilly look and Nicky wilted. He was only crestfallen for a moment before a determined gleam came to his eye. Nicky kept insisting Neil needed help until Neil managed to loosen the tourniquet and rip open his pant leg. Nicky caught sight of Neil’s sluggish bleeding. Neil remembered the last time he was shot. His mother stitched him up in a dark gas-station bathroom, whispering a furious litany into Alex’s ear about his lack of caution. 

He’d rather be back there with Mom, straddling a lidless toilet. A different person with a different name. When his mother was alive and their hell was a mostly private one, the rest of the world an oblivious beast lumbering to the next arbitrary destination. Neil longed for a time before touching someone meant knowing their deepest regrets, worst fears, and greatest secrets. Back when Neil was alone in his head. 

A car cut off the van, and Aaron swore furiously, laying on the horn as if he was trying to get them caught. 

These people were going to get him killed. Neil was certain of that now. 

He’d be damned if it was by a bullet to the leg. Neil downed the nips of vodka he kept in the first aid kit, for just this sort of occasion, and began to sew up the hole in his leg. It was quick work, only a few stitches needed. The hole was small, in view and easy reach. The exit wound was another story. Blood had already soaked through his pants, a small pool forming beneath him.  
Neil splashed the remaining vodka on the wound. He bit his cheek through gritting his teeth through the pain.

He looked up to find three pairs of eyes staring at him in varying degrees of horror and fascination. Mostly horror. Kevin and Aaron looked away they noticed Niel’s attention. Nicky kept staring as if hypnotized. 

“Metal,” Nicky gagged, trying to smile at Neil while making a valiant effort to not lose his lunch. Neil had already dismissed Nicky as a possibility, his stomach too weak for the help Neil needed. 

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that none of you geniuses can manage a decent stitch?”

“Unclench, fire crotch, and I’ll think about helping you,” Aaron’s baleful gaze flicked to Neil in the rearview mirror. 

“You’ll think about learning how to stitch?”

Aaron’s eye roll could have moved mountains, but he gestured for Nicky to take his place at the wheel without further complaints. The van briefly slowed as Aaron vacated the seat before lurching forward under Nicky’s lead foot. Neil’s leg was jostled against the bench, white-hot flashes of pain beckoning sweet unconsciousness. Neil fought the pull, only barely. 

Aaron had to help Neil get his pants off and Neil was utterly humiliated. Aaron snatched the needle and thread from Neil’s hand and proceeded to snitch the exit wound to the best of his ability. His stitches were sloppy and uneven, but Neil was not in a position to be picky. 

Neil carefully taped a square of gauze to the entry and exit wounds. He tore the jeans into shorts and pulled them back on. He only had one more pair of blood stain-free pants, and he may need to blend in at some point. 

The next time the darkness crept in, Neil succumbed to the blissful numbness of sleep.

* * *

Neil was in the van for three days when he concluded that Kevin was an absolute shithead asshole and Neil seriously hated his fucking guts. 

The former Exy champion complained incessantly about the same problems on repeat: they were too slow, they were too complacent, they were too conspicuous. They didn’t have enough supplies, they had too many of the wrong supplies, the lady on the sidewalk made eye contact with him while he was driving. The guy pulled over on the side of the road, changing his tire, definitely recognized him. Neil was driven to the brink by Kevin’s never-ending bombardment of anxiety and paranoia. Neil shared Kevin concerns, and more reasonable ones, but at least he had the decency to keep his worries to himself. He harassed Neil about cleaning his wound, harping on the seriousness of infection. He followed Neil like a dark cloud, making critical comments about everything Neil did to endanger the group. Neil stared at Kevin with baleful eyes. It was abundantly and painfully clear that Kevin was unaccustomed to living on the run. To hardship of any kind. Neil was not surprised, given Kevin’s charmed upbringing. The end of the world as they knew it must have been a real bummer for people like Kevin, who had something to lose. A past to remember with mourning and sadness. 

Neil could not relate, and Kevin’s snapping jumpiness was starting to piss Neil off. 

Kevin had yet to adjust to being afraid. The fear and panic were written so plainly on his face because he never learned to hide it. He was never forced to learn at the point of a knife or the barrel of a gun. Neil hated Kevin a little bit, for the ease of his former life. His hatred was almost as strong as his jealousy. Only Kevin’s sparse silences were a point in his favor, which was ruined every time he looked at Neil with a knowing stare that threatened to drive Neil out of his skin. 

Nicky was equally annoying, if in a different way. He seemed unable to talk about anything other than the old world. Neil knew too much about Nicky’s former life. His boyfriend, Eric, living overseas, where IAAN was just an unpleasant news story. When Nicky took a break from recalling his blissful past, he praised Neil for his skills. Specifically, boiling pond water before drinking it, siphoning gas out of a tank, and how to hotwire a car. Neil was too exhausted and too numb to be amused at the idea that he somehow became the standard of measure for a knowledgeable person. 

Aaron was silent and judgemental as Kevin. His glare begged Neil to jump off a bridge when their eyes met accidentally in the confined space of the van. Other than those moments, Aaron was content to pretend Neil did not exist, and Neil was happy to do the same.

After almost a week in the van, things were starting to get a little tense for Neil’s liking.

Whenever they stopped for rest or a top-up, Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron would walk out of earshot, and begin whispering furiously to each other, careful to turn their backs to Neil. Kevin threw furtive glances at Neil over his shoulder. Nicky gesticulated wildly, a rogue thumb gesturing at Neil every other minute. Neil did not need to be a genius to know they were discussing him. Likely, where to dump his body after they killed him and stripped his corpse of anything remotely valuable. Nicky apologized every time, giving Neil some vague explanation about Kevin’s favorite food and Aaron’s unhealthy fixation with unnecessarily complicated books. Later, when Kevin and Aaron were asleep, Nicky told Neil that they were looking for the best places to resupply. He was lying. Neil decided it did not matter, for the moment. Neil considered offering his professional opinion but ultimately thought better of it. Kevin and Aaron did not trust him, and Nicky trusted him too much, shared too much. Kevin continued to stare whenever he was awake but remained staunchly silent about anything personal. 

The tension in the van rose slowly and came to a head all at once, like a convection oven.

It was Aaron’s stupid idea that started it all. Neil preferred to stay out of their decision-making process but he was not about to sit by and let Aaron drive him into certain death. 

“This store seems the best bet,” Aaron pointed with an unsteady finger to a spot on the map, “but we have to take the highway.”

Aaron had gotten a little shaky in the last few days. His eyes were bloodshot, he was not sleeping, and he was starting to swear with every other word. Neil was not surprised that he wanted to go to a store with a tiny pharmacy. His best bet for a resupply. Post-industrial America was a dangerous place for an addict. Anything medical came in limited supply, especially pharmaceuticals. Factories were not functioning, nevertheless distributing. 

“Are you guys insane?” Neil burst from the back, “or do you want to die?” All three jumped, surprised by Neil’s intrusion.

“Shut up,” Aaron snarled, “the highway is the only direct route.”

“Only tracers take the highway,” Neil said through gritted teeth, trying to resist wringing Aaron’s idiot neck, “are you a tracer?”

Aaron seemed ready to boil over with rage. And addict in desperate need of his next fix was a dangerous loose-cannon. Aaron could do anything from taking to swing to pulling a knife unless he was hiding a gun of his own. Nicky watched Aaron with worried eyes. Kevin had a dumb look on his face like Neil just called his whole worldview into question. 

“Maybe we should listen to Neil,” Nicky cut in, barely weathering Aaron’s betrayed glare, “better safe than sorry, right?”

Aaron sputtered and argued but eventually capitulated when it became clear that no one was going to agree with him. It took a day to get to Aaron’s store by the backroads. Neil enjoyed every minute of Aaron’s silent fuming. 

The four of them arrived at the superstore a little after dawn. Kevin and Aaron grabbed two duffles large enough for a lot of food and hopefully clean water. Neil did not like the van pulling over every time they needed a drink. Kevin and Aaron went in. Neil was considered untrustworthy, so he had to wait in the car with Nicky as a chaperone, Neil could not comprehend why they would turn down the extra manpower and settle for half the supplies they could manage if they just let Neil and Nicky help. Neil’s understanding of rational mistrust did not stop him from fuming over the foolishness of wasted resources. Nicky was more than happy to be left behind - probably so he could spend a few more minutes waxing poetic to Neil about his every Eric fantasy. Neil felt sorry for Nicky, pining after a guy he was either inventing out of loneliness or was never going to see again. 

Kevin and Aaron strolled through what remained of the front door, broken glass crunching under their feet so loudly Neil could hear it from the parking lot. The chime of a battery-operated alert bell set Neil’s teeth on edge, the tension in his legs urging him to run. The pulling pain of his still-healing bullet wound telling him to stay. Running would rip open his stitches and leave him even worse off than he was now. Neil imagined hobbling through the woods, stemming the bleeding and trying not to leave a trail behind him. Neil would need a mirror in order to haphazardly restitch the back of his thigh.

He was amazed that the three of them were still alive, not to mention outside of the camps, given their cavalier degree of carelessness. Neil swallowed an irritated sigh and prepared for a long and anxious wait in the van, constantly on the lookout for hints of movement in the bushes or the gleam of silver gun barrels. 

It took Neil too long to notice the pickup parked in the fire lane a few yards away.

The parking lot was crowded but the vehicles were marked as abandoned by a fine layer of dust. The truck was not dusty. Instead, it was streaked with dried dirt like someone drove it deliberately through the mud. The back tailgate was open, and Neil could see the top of a cardboard box protruding over the side. Adrenaline spiked through his system but he knew better than to let his hands shake. Neil refused to give in to the fear and panic that ate at him like an infection.

Neil cursed himself for his stupidity. 

“We need to leave right now.”

“Neil? What’s the matter?”

“Someone’s already here,”

As if on cue, a gunshot rang out from somewhere within the bowels of the store. Judging by the sound, it was a shotgun shell.

“Oh god!” Nicky shrieked in Neil’s ear. 

“Start the car,” Neil growled, pushing Nicky towards the driver’s seat. 

Distantly, Neil heard the shooter cock to reload. Neil hoped it was a redneck and not a tracer. Or a redneck tracer. Neil only had ten bullets left, all the rounds loaded into the pistol he kept in on his person instead of in his backpack after he caught Nicky playing with the bullets a few nights ago. Neil pulled the gun from his waistband and palmed the familiar weight.

Neil slid the van door open, slowly, in preparation for Kevin and Aaron’s arrival. 

Unsurprisingly, the two came sprinting out the front of the store, their arms empty of even the bags they were carrying when they went in. Kevin quickly outpaced Aaron, leaving the shorter blonde in the dust. The former Exy star leaped into the van head-first like he was diving to make the game-saving goal. The shooter emerged from the entrance and leveled his shotgun at Aaron’s back. Neil preferred not to waste bullets saving assholes, but he did not want to deal with Nicky sobbing over his cousin's dead body. 

The guy had a potbelly and a baseball cap. He was too far away for Neil to hit him, but that was fine. No hardened killer used buckshot. Return fire should scare the guy away. Neil leveled his sight a few feet over Aaron’s shoulder and shot one at the unbroken window panel behind the guy’s head. The glass shattered on impact. The shooter jumped a foot in the air and clumsily retreated back behind the cover of the storefront. Nicky floor it as soon as Aaron put a foot in the van. 

Aaron did not thank Neil, but Neil did not expect him too. Gratitude was not a currency either of them understood. 

The four of them fell into an uneasy routine after that close encounter. 

Aaron still hated Neil and glared at him every chance he got, but trust was slowly growing in Kevin and Nicky. For Neil’s part, he trusted nobody, especially not liars. It was hypocritical, but Neil was not proud. The only thing more dangerous than a liar was a bad liar, and Neil somehow found himself stuck with three of them. 

It did not take long for Neil to figure out that their undercurrent of stress went beyond tracer paranoia. They were going somewhere, Neil was sure of it. Somewhere that was not a depot store. 

There was an urgency to their movement like they were on a timetable, even after the world collapsed. Kevin poured over at a paper map when he thought Neil was not looking, staring at it like it held the secrets of the universe. When everyone was asleep, Aaron would pull out a worn piece of lined paper and read it to himself, over and over again. He held item like it was precious, always carefully refolding the paper before slipping it back in his pocket. 

Aaron got more stressed and more unbearable as the days went on, hanging onto the edge of withdrawal for dear life. 

The private conversations between the three of them grew shorter and more heated. 

Whatever they were looking for, they obviously had no idea where to find it. 

Neil grew increasingly curious about the subject of their clandestine whispering. He needed to know where they were planning on going. Neil needed at least another week before his leg was fit to run, but he was willing to cut that short if he was being chased. 

Nicky tried to break the tension in the van more than once, speaking to Neil like they were friends because Nicky was clearly desperate for conversation and Neil was the only person remotely receptive to his inane chatter. Neil felt bad for thinking of Nicky so harshly, but he could not understand why he tried so hard at pretending to be happy. 

“So, Neil,” Nicky hummed, “where are you from?

Neil considered the many ways he could answer that question. Nicky was driving and Neil was consigned to the passenger seat because Kevin and Aaron were sleeping in the back. 

“Arizona,” Neil said, recalling the nowhere city where Nicky found him, “Millport.”

“The middle of nowhere! I can relate, I’m from this place called Colombia, which is essentially the asscrack of North Carolina. It only has one club!” 

“Unbelievable.”

Neil let Nicky talk, and he responded when cued. After the depot store and the arguments, Nicky was more comfortable talking to Neil than Kevin or Aaron. 

“What do you miss most about the old world?” 

Only a few years without TV and cell phones and it was already considered ‘the old world.'

“My Mom,” Neil murmured against his better judgment.

Nicky’s smile wavered, and he started to cry. He tried to wipe at his face before Neil saw. Nicky let the silence settle for a few seconds. Apparently, Neil’s slip emboldened Nicky to ask more invasive questions. 

“So, Neil,” Nicky said, his voice laced with innuendo, “how did you escape your camp?”

Neil was never taken to a camp. Mom was too used to the life to be caught by government stooges or recreational kidnappers. Neil never saw the inside of the camps, but he watched from beyond the gates and through the fences, seeing his fair share of horror. Camp guards were notoriously corrupt and susceptible to bribery. Mom had the cash to burn after they no longer had to buy new identification. At least, not any ID that would be considered valid. Government-run institutions had resources Mom could no longer find without access to her contacts. Camps supplied things like MREs, heavy-duty sleeping bags, sterile bandages, suture kits, and ammunition. 

The camps were the best part of the apocalypse, for Mom and Neil. A guaranteed discrete source of necessary resources. Camps drew all the attention in the area it occupied, all the nearby neighborhoods allocated to housing employees of the camp, all associated establishments that managed to stay open did so because of the money flowing out of the camps. Free labor always benefits a capitalist system. Capitalism burned down with the economy and rose like a phoenix as a perfect replica of itself, exacerbated into its worst form. Freedom as a guise for exploitation and liberty represented as kids in crammed in cages and trapped behind electric fences. 

In lieu of answering, Neil checked the rearview mirror. He saw the same car for the third time that day, same make, model, same plates. They were being followed. 

“Hit the gas,” Neil urged, hobbling between the front seats, “we’re being followed.”

“What,” Kevin gasped, “how do you know?”

Kevin was dumbfounded. He clutched the armrest and whipped his head around to look out the back window. He kept doing it until Neil pushed his head down. Nicky was terrified and trying to hide it. He was smiling, but Neil could see tears in the corners of his eyes. Aaron was angry, as usual, and exhausted. Neil had not seen Aaron sleep since he arrived in the van. His whole body was trembling. 

“Take the next turn,” Neil insisted, “it doesn’t matter which direction.”

“Don’t do it, Nicky,” Aaron growled, “for all we know, you’re leading us into a trap.” 

Aaron glared at Neil, ever difficult and ever stupid. He grew more combative the longer he went without finding his particular vice. 

“Again,” Neil clarified, “You’re forgetting which of us shot the other. I’ll give you a hint,” Neil sneered, “It wasn’t me. Now, you can do what I’m telling you to do, or you can be at the mercy of whoever they are,” Neil nodded over his shoulder, "and hope they're as nice as I am." 

The snark had the desired effect, turning Kevin and Nicky's eyes to the floor. Aaron gave Neil a scathing look.

Nicky turned down the next right.

The pursuing car took the same turn. Then started drifting further back, trying not to draw suspicion on the smaller road. Neil heard the blood pounding in his ears, panic choking his throat closed. It could easily be his father’s people. Lola, Romero, and Jackson could have easily followed the van after Nicky grabbed Neil, sluggish eyesore that it was. Neil hoped they were tracers. Much easier to deal with than the Butcher’s people. 

“Park behind the building,” Neil pointed to an abandoned gas station, “and get ready to run.” 

“But you can’t run,” Kevin stated, critical of Neil’s injury. Kevin was critical of Neil’s everything. 

“I’m going to distract them, while you three run for it,” Neil informed Kevin dryly, “show some gratitude.”

“Neil, we can’t let you do that,” Nicky cried.

“He offered,” Aaron pulled into the gravel parking lot and stopped the van behind the ramshackle rest stop. “This is me showing gratitude for Neil’s noble sacrifice,” Aaron said sarcastically. The quip was almost enough to make Aaron tolerable. 

“I can’t leave you here alone,” Kevin said, distressed. Neil was conflicted. Kevin needed to leave for his safety but he wanted to stay for Neil. He wanted to stay because he did not want to leave Neil alone to face whoever was after them. Neil did not know what to do with that.

“Run south, back the way we came,” Neil told them as he loaded his gun with the last few bullets in his backpack, “stay in the trees and keep quiet.”

“We can’t go back,” Aaron snapped, “there’s nothing back there!”

“And that’s why they won’t follow you,” Neil snapped, “I’ll meet you at mile marker 101,” Neil told Nicky, “if I’m not there by the morning, leave without me.”

“Neil, you don’t have to do this!”

Neil did not have time to argue with Nicky while watching for headlights and trying to push Kevin toward the treeline at the same time. Aaron dragged his cousin away by the arm, Nicky putting up a flailing fight. Neil was happy that Aaron was finally doing something useful beyond throwing cars.

Kevin was still reluctant to leave Neil behind. If Neil had learned anything about Kevin, its was his stubbornness. He would not leave unless Neil forced him to go.

“Get the hell away from me, Kevin,” Neil shoved him with both hands, “you’re an overbearing fucking asshole and I can’t stand to be around you.”

Neil was lying. Finding Kevin was the only semi-good thing to happen to Neil since Mom died. He was annoying as hell but he was also the only piece of Neil’s past that wasn’t soaked in blood. He had never been around other kids before he met Riko and Kevin. Riko was mean and hostile, but Kevin was gentle and quiet. A day spent practicing with them, and Neil thought of Kevin as his only friend. 

Kevin looked like Neil stabbed him in the chest. Neil was miserable to do it, but if destroying his relationship with Kevin was the only way to keep Kevin alive, so be it. 

They were interrupted by the sound of crunching gravel and old, squeaky brakes. Two cars doors, and four pairs of boots. Two voices, one man, one woman. Their words became more distinct the closer they came to the building. Check the back. Keep an eye out for kids. Neil’s perceptions flipped between Kevin and the two followers. Neil waited for Kevin to reach the edge of the building’s long sunset shadow. A stretch of field separated him from the treeline. If Neil timed it perfectly, their pursuers would be too close to the building to see the field beyond in their peripheral vision. They would not pick up on Kevin’s movement even though the treeline was visible, because they would be distracted. Neil was going to give them something to chase. 

Neil broke into a stuttered, lilting run. 

“Hey, you!”

“Wait, kid!”

Two pairs of boots followed Neil, drawing them in the opposite direction as Kevin and the cousins.

Neil hobbled across the road and into the trees, knowing they would follow him. Neil just needed to find the right place for them to trap him. Neil drew the tracers north, in the direction of a series of signs pointing toward a quarry they passed a few miles back. It was more running than Neil expected. His thigh was screaming, going out from underneath him when he tried to put weight on it. He kept running. It was everything Mom told Neil to do. 

_Keep running._

Neil got to a break in the trees and was rewarded with a view of still, blue water, and big, grey stones. He had less than a minute to find a way out before they trapped him in a potentially fatal situation. Neil noticed a series of flat boulders that created an unlikely bridge leading into the trees. Neil heard his pursuers cursing as they crashed their way out of the woods. He ran for the lip of the cliff directly above the coincidental plateau. Ideally, they would chase after him, think him trapped, and let their guard down just long enough for Neil to slip away. Neil kicked a small rock off the edge of the quarry and watched it fall into the water, for effect. 

“Woah, Woah,” a firm, masculine voice, “don’t do anything stupid, kid.”

“We just want to help you,” called a different voice.

_Trust no one._

If his pursuer only knew. The man had dark skin and a kind face. The type of person that could convince people to go against their best interests. 

“Get away from the edge,” his companion commanded, a woman half the size and twice as intimidating, “right now.”

“Why?” Neil asked curiously, “do they dock your fee if you have to bring me in multiple bags?” 

“Damn kid, we’re not going to kill you,” he said, putting down his gun and holding up his hands, “we want to help you.” The woman just lifted her gun higher to make up the difference. “You’re hurt. We have a doctor. Well, she’s more of a nurse, but she can fix you up, no problem. Come with us and you will be safe, I promise.” 

Neil took a measured step back. His heel brushed the edge of the dropoff. Matt and the harsh woman lurched forward as if they could catch him if he jumped. If he decided to let go and fall. It was the opposite of Neil’s instincts. 

“Don’t jump kid,” The guy said, putting down his gun and holding up his hands. The woman just raised her gun higher, to make up the difference, “we’re not going to hurt you. We know where you are because we’ve been there. At the edge of your worst nightmares, about step into a life not worth living. It doesn't have to be that black and white kid. We can help you out. Trust us, please.”

“Yeah,” Neil said doubtfully, “No offense, but I don’t believe you,” Neil looked at them more closely. Their clothes, their posture, their weapons. Both were tall and athletic. The man was stacked in a way Neil could never achieve even if he trained his whole life, and the woman looked squirrely and ready to be underestimated. They could overpower Neil easily in his peak condition. With a lame leg, he had no chance against them if they decided to force their ‘help’ on him. 

“Only tracers can buy those guns,” he gestured to their rifles. Civilians were legally limited to handguns after IAAN broke out. Too many suicides. 

Neil inched closer to the edge. A quick glance revealed the small outcropping underneath, big enough that would save Neil from a nasty death and small enough to convince the tracers that Neil fell into the quarry.

“It’s not what it looks like, kid - we pretend to be tracers so we can drive around without questions. We’re not going to sell you for money. We are not those kinds of people. We save kids from the camps.”

“Have you actually saved anybody?”

“Yes,” he said fervently, “we have.” 

“Let me clarify, have you actually broken any kids out of camps, or do you just swoop in after they free themselves and give yourself the credit of the rescue,” the man was appalled by the suggestion. The woman was stone-faced but Neil caught a change in her dark eyes. “You offer hospitality, but something tells me that your generosity doesn’t come free. A good Green sells decently well in the international market,” Neil said, and the two of them looked both nauseous and furious. Neil saw no lie in their reactions, and IAAN kids did sell at a premium if they were talented. They were a little too wholesome for tracers and too sanctimonious for traffickers. Neil was more disturbed by these altruistic strangers than he was curious about what they were really offering him. They had guns and access to the tracernet. Neil should be gone already. 

“If you believe anything about us, believe that we hate those fucking traffickers more than you do.” 

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Neil replied, “to make your miserable lives a little more bearable.”

“At least the federal government isn’t after my ass,” The woman pointed out, “you can’t say the same.”

“Right now, you’re after my ass.”

“We’re not tracers.”

“If you’re really not tracers, then let me go and don’t follow me.”

“We want to help you, kid.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Everybody needs help,”

They were not going to give up on this. Neil was going to have to force his way out.

“I want to believe you,” Neil said, trying to draw them in, “but I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“You can, kid, what's your name?”

“Neil,” he said, using their split second of victorious distraction to lift his gun and shoot twice. Neil shot at their feet. They leaped away on instinct. Neil dropped down to the small ledge and broke into a dead run. He vaulted over a rock and into the woods. 

_Never look back_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so I lied about Andrew being in this chapter. He will make an appearance soon. 
> 
> Neil's leg is not healing as fast as he hoped, and he is getting too close to the Monsters for comfort. Neil needs to make some choices soon, before someone else chooses for him. I hope you stick around for what comes next.
> 
> Note: The only real difference between a tracer and a trafficker is whether they sell kids domestically or internationally 
> 
> Couldn't pass up the opportunity to get Neil into jorts 
> 
> Thank you


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for canonical violence, suicide mention, articulated self-loathing, and gratuitous gun violence as well as oodles of adult language. 
> 
> I've gotten a bunch of comments from readers having read either TFC or TDM trilogies, but not both. To hear from so many people that my fic is readable from one fandom to the other is literally my dream come true. 
> 
> Every person who reads this story is perfect and I’ll fight anyone that says otherwise - just say the word. 
> 
> ***
> 
> Neil makes fateful choice after fateful choice.
> 
> Enjoy

It was at least a five-mile hike from the quarry to the agreed-upon highway sign. 

Neil’s jarring, uneven steps could only be generously be called walking. The stitches in his leg were miraculously intact but Neil did not know how much longer that luck would last. Popping a stitch would be a serious problem considering he used the last of the alcohol and thread on his most recent injury. The constant pull and burn of skin and muscles was an agonizing reminder of the urgency under which Neil lived every minute of his life. 

It was sheer dumb luck that Nicky grabbed him before the Malcolm twins and Jackson Plank could catch up to him in Millport. Mom and Neil had a few close calls with his father’s men, but Mom always got them out of it. Without Mom, Neil felt exposed, and he had no doubt that his father's men were tight on his trail. Neil would have been fine if Kevin and his friends just left Neil bleeding in the street. He would have disappeared into the trees, found another car, and kept going south. He would have gotten over the border and disappeared into Mexico. Neil’s Spanish was passable and Mom taught him to keep a country between Neil and his problems. 

Getting shot in the leg was the worst possible thing that could have happened to Neil. 

With Neil barely able to put weight on his leg, he was at the mercy of Nicky's attention, Aaron’s moods, and Kevin’s whims. For nearly two weeks, Neil had been stuck in their shitty van as they drove an agonizingly slow, meandering trail to their mysterious destination. To his father's men, it must seem like Neil was asking to be found. Traveling their seemingly aimless course must make him like a piece of hay in a needlestack - wildly bright and glaringly obvious - to the Butcher’s followers. Neil knew the Malcolm’s were getting closer and Neil was enabling them every moment he stayed with Kevin and the others.

Unfortunately for Neil, he would definitely get caught if he tried to run on his busted leg. His choices were to stay and get caught sooner than he’d like, or run and get caught immediately. The van was the best of Neil’s shitty options; an irritating necessity of his circumstances. Neil did not get to make decisions based on what he wanted or even what he needed. It was only what was going to keep him alive. 

Neil managed to get himself trapped in this shit situation and the only way out was a beat-up van full of assholes. 

Neil’s leg was a step away from falling off when he finally dragged himself to mile marker 101.

Kevin stood in the middle of the road like he was begging to get picked up, run over, or both. 

The tall former-striker scanned the road to the horizon in either direction, his usual hypervigilant yet obtuse self. Kevin’s gaze flicked back and forth to the highway sign with something akin to worry in his eyes like he needed to double-check that it was the right number. His arms were crossed and impatience stiffened his spine to rigidity. 

Kevin was waiting for Neil. 

As entertaining as it would be to keep Kevin waiting, Neil wanted to lay down more. 

Neil limped out from the tree line and watched the anxiety on Kevin’s face transform into elation at the sight of him. He ran to Neil, who almost had a nervous breakdown over the way Kevin’s giant feet managed to find every crunchy maple leaf in his path. Neil knew he wasn’t being followed, but Kevin was not helping his peace of mind.

Kevin stopped a few feet short like he was not sure it was Neil he was really seeing. Nicky and Aaron were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they finally made the smart move and left a moving target like Kevin to his own devices. Neil was delighted not to see Aaron. Unluckily for Neil, Kevin was there to pick up the interrogative slack. 

“Who were they?”

Kevin kept glancing around Neil like he was waiting for an ambush. 

Neil did not bother stifling his sigh. 

“I didn’t ask.”

He did not ask because he couldn't care less. They were not his father’s people, and the rest was meaningless. 

“You didn’t ask?” Kevin huffed, incredulous, “it didn’t occur to you that we should know who was following us?”

Kevin was horrified and furious, his expression condemning Neil like he failed to complete a simple play on the court. Against his better judgment, Neil engaged. 

“I ditched them,” Neil defended in spite of himself, “and they didn’t see you.”

“You have no way of knowing that! You’re just guessing if you didn’t talk to them! It's not like tracers make conversation with their victims -- 

Kevin was yelling. A half-breath away from hyperventilation as he went off on Neil for everything that happened in the last day, which Neil was starting to recognize as a regular thing. Kevin could barely handle his emotions under ideal circumstances, nevertheless in a crisis. Neil doubted that Kevin would still be free if he did not have Aaron around to throw pursuing cars into the wind. Neil had no sympathy for any of them. 

Neil needed to sit down more than Kevin needed an outlet for his anxiety.

“If you don’t get out of my way in five seconds we are going to have a serious problem on our hands, and by we, I mean you.” 

Kevin looked gobsmacked like he had never been interrupted before in his life. They faced each other silently, one rigid and the other listing weakly. Kevin’s eyes narrowed critically and his face twisted in disgust. Neil was pretty sure he was going to pass out if the stalemate went on much longer. 

“This behavior would never be acceptable on the court,” Kevin decided. 

“If you haven’t noticed, we’re not on the court,” Neil snapped.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Neil could not handle the grief that shadowed Kevin’s expression. He did not want to talk about what Kevin lost - what Neil was never given the opportunity to find. Playing Exy again was a pipedream that got more miserable the longer Neil thought about it. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it must feel for Kevin. 

“Can we not talk about this anymore?”

Kevin relented with a scoff that seemed more habit than genuine irritation. Kevin grabbed Neil’s arm like he was a loose Exy ball a foot from the goal and manhandled him to the van. Neil sagged into Kevin’s hold to get the weight off his leg. 

“That was a stupid thing to do,” Kevin admonished like a court coach as he threw Neil’s arm over his shoulder, “you’re lucky they didn’t kill you, or worse. What the hell were you thinking?”

Neil bit his tongue to keep the snappy retort behind his teeth. He was thinking of the huge bounty on Kevin’s head. He was thinking about what Lola would do to Kevin just to make him scream. Neil was thinking about the Butcher and every other evil thing that roamed the desolate cities of the US. Neil was thinking about how to protect these virtual strangers from the brutality of his life and the danger inherent in being in Neil’s proximity. Luckily for all of them, the tracers from the quarry were amateurs at best. Neil was grateful for their incompetence mostly for himself. He did not want Kevin or Nicky hurt but Neil wanted to die even less.

If Neil had any sense he would have limped right past the mile marker and carried on alone. 

Instead, Neil let Kevin take the weight off his leg and help him hobble in the direction of the van. To Neil’s relief, Nicky parked it behind the treeline, out of sight from the road. He was almost happy to see the chipped black paint and dented fender. Neil slapped Kevin’s fretful hands away and hauled himself through the back door. Crawling was not beneath Neil’s dignity.

Aaron was asleep in the back, tossing and turning under one of the brightly colored blankets Nicky liked to collect. Nicky sat across from him, leaning against the paneling of the van. His knees were pulled tight to his chest, his arms wrapped them, hands fisting his pant legs. Nicky tried to look happy to see Neil’s return. He fretted over the state of Neil’s leg but it was half-hearted in his preoccupation of hovering worriedly over Aaron. Nicky finally figured out what Neil noticed almost immediately: Nicky’s cousin was on the precipice of withdrawal. Neil was grateful for the reprieve from interrogation. The silence of Aaron’s unconsciousness was a welcome reprieve. 

Neil shuffled himself under the makeshift bench and curled on his side. His leg throbbed with the sluggish beat of his heart. He was dehydrated, nausea added to the near blinding pain. Neil shot a forlorn look to the half-empty case of plastic water bottles. Kevin tossed him one with a judgemental expression.

“What is your fucking problem now?” 

Kevin recoiled at Neil’s tone and stared at him with a mixture of anger and hurt in his glaring gaze. The green shade flashed Yellow with restrained emotion. The look hit Neil like a punch to the gut. He was reluctantly willing to hurt Kevin and hated Kevin’s mercurial, melancholy moods, but Neil was terrified by the relief he saw in the ex-striker’s expression when he appeared on the highway. Kevin’s worry, his instant welcome, was more concern than anyone had ever shown Neil, other than Mom. Kevin hovered over Neil like he was waiting for Neil to disappear. Like he cared about whether Neil lived or died. 

It was a frightening concept. 

In the front, the dashboard exploded in a shower of sparks. A plume of noxious black smoke was released into the air. The popping sound was enough to wake Aaron, who came to consciousness thrashing wildly, bristled like a cat pet backward, as he always was.

“What the fuck,” Aaron jackknifed awake and noticed Neil, “Oh, you’re still alive? Terrific.”

Childishly, Neil stuck his tongue out in mockery of Aaron’s anger, hoping it would piss him off even more. It did. 

“Goddamn it, Kevin,” Nicky shrieked, “that’s the third one this month!”

“Fuck you, Kevin!” Aaron said, a constant diatribe. 

Neil looked at Kevin for confirmation of Nicky ludicrous suggestion, but Kevin refused to meet Neil’s eye. Instead, he stared patently ahead like his life depended on it. Apathetic and nonreactive even when Aaron stooped to screaming in his face, a bare inch from his nose. Vacant, like Kevin, was not present. Lights on, no one home. 

Aaron got weak and sick after throwing Kathy’s car. It stood to reason that Kevin would have some kind of reaction to blowing up the van. Yellows, like pieces of copper on a circuit board, seemed to fizzle out for a moment after the fact. It was almost like Kevin’s consciousness was the spark that exploded, and like a computer, he needed a few minutes to reboot. 

Evidently, Kevin’s anxiety was weaponized. 

“You have got to be kidding me,” Neil snorted, “how many times total?”

“At least a dozen,” Nicky hedged, “I think.”

“Twenty-three,” Aaron screamed in outrage, infuriated by Kevin’s blank expression, “twenty-fucking-three!” 

“Yeah, you guys are on your own with this one,” Neil said. He rolled onto his back and tried to ignore his leg. At this point, cutting the thing off might hurt less in the long run. People could run on prosthetics.

“Hey dumbass, you should elevate your leg.” 

“Fuck off,” Neil told Aaron, pointedly. He waited until Nicky and Aaron left to find another car before he shoved his backpack under his leg. It helped a little with the pain - just enough for Neil to fade into blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

Neil woke up in the back of a moving van for the second time in as many weeks and he was actually kind of embarrassed. 

This time, it was dead quiet. 

Neil sensed a distinct atmosphere of defeat settled over the enclosed space. 

Clearly, they got into one of their three-way bickering sessions while Neil was unconscious. Going by the universal dissatisfaction, Neil figured that they decided to temporarily give up on whatever they were looking for - if only for the time being. The atmosphere was annoyingly thick with the unspoken. A loaded silence. Despite today’s escape, they were defeated. Neil was at the bottom of an adrenaline crash from saving their skins and they were acting like someone died. 

To them, it was just another day gone in search of their prize. The danger - the risk - did not seem to register with any of them. Neil took the worries off of their shoulders, so they found something else to mope about. They might be safe, but that was always a temporary state of affairs. They should spend this time planning their next move instead of wallowing in their supposed failure. 

At least they were looking. 

It was something at least, and they were too busy throwing pity parties to appreciate their brush with death. Maybe it was just Neil. He was the type to savor the small victories. The cousins and Kevin looked resigned, like dead men walking on their last march to the Butcher’s basement in the Baltimore house. It was depressing. 

Nicky was behind the wheel and driving north-west according to Neil’s compass. At least twenty miles over the speed limit. Neil was bothered. I was his habit to stay inconspicuous and it was clear the others did not feel the same. 

Neil was curious as to where they were going, mostly insofar as the likelihood of them getting him killed in the process. 

Neil regretted showing up at the mile marker. He should not have gone back to the van. He had a perfect opportunity to cut and run, damn his leg, and he did not take it. He returned to the company of the assholes that almost got him killed - twice. Neil’s stupidity was reaching monumental proportions and he had a feeling that he was running out of time to keep making bad choices. 

Neil hobbled between the front seats. 

“So, where exactly are you going?”

“None of your business, asshole,” Aaron snapped from beneath a blanket. He was curled against the side of the new van, only his eyes visible over the edge of the fabric. Aaron was laid low, at height with Neil’s ankle, his face gaunt yet puffy. Nicky shot Neil a helpless look in the rearview. Neil made eye contact with Nicky in the mirror while he spoke to Aaron. 

“It’s Neil, and considering I’m trapped in this van against my will, courtesy of the new bullet hole you so generously gave me, I’d say you owe me,” Neil concluded, not even mentioning the part where he saved their lives from tracers when they didn’t even notice that they were being followed. Neil genuinely wondered how they survived this long, just the three of them. 

“None of your business, asshole named Neil. We don’t owe you shit.”

“We have a little safe-house in the area,” Nicky exclaimed guiltily, though equally excited to share a secret, “it’s nothing special, but we’ve got some beds and running water. It’s cold as Frosty’s ball sac but we make do.” 

Neil knew better than to think of a bed and drinkable water as nothing special, regardless of temperature.

“Nicky, the fuck?”

Aaron’s glare could have killed Nicky - literally - after what Neil saw him do to Kathy’s car. Neil usually avoided pushing his luck but he was not worried. Aaron was too weak to toss Neil with his mind and Neil was confident that he could drop Aaron like a stone if it came to a fight. Physical or otherwise. Still, he watched carefully for any hint of Blue that may bleed into Aaron’s dilated eyes. 

Neil killed Mom by accident. When he destroyed Aaron, it would be deliberate. 

He should leave, but he really did not want to jump out of another moving car. Neil hated his life but he hated the idea of leaving Kevin to stumble around the woods, ignorant and helpless and at the mercy of the clown cousins. He resented the idea of someone cruel taking advantage of Nicky’s kindness. He pitied anyone that crossed Aaron’s path. 

Neil knew he was doomed when he woke in the middle of one rare night when no one was driving and the van was pulled over to the side of the road. Neil heard a clicking sound and ended up finding Nicky examining Neil’s gun, which he left in his bag rarely after he got shot with it. Nicky flicked the safety on and off with his free hand, his finger resting casually on the trigger, his relaxed wrist pointing vaguely at Kevin’s sleeping back. Neil leapt to his feet in a blink. He snatched the gun from Nicky’s grip before he could startle and the cousins could tie for most accidental shootings. 

“Don’t fucking play with it,” Neil snapped at a sheepish Nicky. Neil kept his gun on him at all times after that, even when he slept. 

Maybe Neil stayed because he knew they would die without him - unless they killed themselves first - or he killed them. 

Either way, he stayed. For now. 

Neil tucked his sleeves around his fists and rested his weight on his good leg. He leaned against the passenger’s side seat to keep his balance in the moving vehicle. He needed to stay standing in case Aaron decided to make a move. It would be an interesting fight. A man who couldn't stand up against a man who could fall down at any moment. Neil hadn’t eaten in a while. 

“What do you want me to say?” Nicky was sheepish but unrepentant, “I have a generous nature,” he shrugged at Aaron like he was helpless to stop his own mouth from running. 

“Are you trying to get us killed before we can --

Aaron cut himself off mid sentence in an effort to refrain from saying something he did not want Neil to hear. Interesting, that he thought Neil cared about their mysterious agenda. Aaron took some deep breaths and tried to get ahold of his emotions, “we can’t trust this guy just because he’s a kid.” 

“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” Neil promised, “considering I’m the only one with a gun.”

Neil did not need a gun to kill, but Aaron did not know that. 

“Can we have a no guns rule? I think that would be fun,” Nicky offered, inserting himself into the middle in an effort to diffuse the situation. 

“No,” Neil said, because he didn’t trust them, and they didn’t trust him - not really. Not so long as he lied to them by omission. 

Neil pretended not to notice their curiosity surrounding his Color. He was the right age and on the run, the basic criteria of IAAN survivors. They wanted to know his Color to learn what he was capable of. They wanted to know if he was connected to them by a shared curse and if he could be trusted for that reason. Neil was not about to tell them his Color, despite the curious glances sent his way whenever Kevin sparked off like a radio with a short. Every time Aaron used his ability out of laziness or under Nicky’s prodding when the man was looking for entertainment. Their eyes followed his movements carefully, waiting with bated breath for some hint of the unusual. 

Neil would die before he spilled his secret. 

“You talk big but I’m not seeing a lot of killing,” Aaron said to Neil, voice dripping with contempt. 

“Is that a request?”

Orange were rare as they were feared. Like rabid dogs taken out back and shot because they were uncontrollable. The Tracernet platform had a neon warning banner at the top and bottom of the directory screen. 

WARNING _Orange: Terminate Immediately_ WARNING 

Followed by a list of Orange kids still at large. 

Last Neil checked the list was blank. 

Everything about the platform broadcast the way anyone under twenty was classified as the property of the state. The truest divide of any society and the only way to survive that brutal treatment was to bond with people. Even in this, Neil was different from his peers. The others, the Greens, Blues, and Yellows, like Kevin, were afraid of the Colors at the top of the publicized, illustrative danger pyramid - much in the way children feared adults. The way the sane feared the disturbed. The way upright citizens feared criminals. Some abilities could be used to kill, and some were designed for nothing but death. Neil was born one of the later. Being Orange only proved his warped nature. Just like his father. 

Reds were conspicuously missing from the Tracernet server. No heading under the list of the wanted and no mention in the info sections at all. The omission made Mom suspicious, but Neil had more immediate concerns. 

“Is that a threat?”

“That depends,” Neil said, standing over Aaron threateningly, “on whether or not you plan to answer my question.” 

Neil did not even need his mind to kill Aaron. Just a boot. 

“Nicky already told you.”

“Not good enough. I’m going to need to know the exact location of this so-called safe house before I agree to go with you,” Neil said, doubt infused into his voice. All of them have terrible judgement. 

“Not a chance,” Kevin piped up, “you don’t need to know.” 

A cold look from Neil was all it took for Kevin to shut up. 

“You make it sound like you have a choice,” Aaron smirked at the idea of his own cleverness. 

Neil said nothing and let the silence drag. 

Nicky started to sweat. Kevin looked around for someone to tell him what was happening. Eventually, Aaron grew uncomfortable. It was a technique Neil learned from Mom when they first went on the run. Everyone was insecure, deep down. Being right had nothing to do with the truth. It was about who had the strongest will. Neil let the silence speak for him, and left their own minds to fill in the blanks. If Neil wasn’t arguing his case, it must be because it was obviously correct, right? Neil let their own minds convince them that he was right. Give anyone enough time to stew and they have no choice but to spin their wheels. Neil was just turning them in his direction. He watched in detached interest as their own tension consumed them.

Soon enough, they were looking at each other with condemnation instead of Neil. Each one of them expecting the other to make the decisions - to decide their collective fate. A fractured group never lasted long. If anything, Neil was doing them a favor, forcing them to make a necessary choice before it was made for them - or before they were too dead to decide anything. Aaron, his foolhardiness disguised as bravery, was the one to finally object. He confronted Neil. 

“Who the hell put you in charge?”

“You did,” Neil quipped, “when you couldn’t go grocery shopping without nearly getting Kevin shot in the back by a redneck.” Neil could care less if Aaron fucked off and died. Neil did not need to throw cars to escape tracers or his father’s men. 

“I can take care of myself,” Kevin piped indignantly from the passenger’s seat.

“No, you can’t,” Neil said succinctly, without bothering to glance former striker. Kevin would definitely die if he was left on his own. Like a baby duck. The huge bounty on his head and his unique ability to murder vehicles was the main reason the cousins were already so far up shit creek. The wreckage of Kathy’s car alone was a neon sign pointing right to them and fighting Neil on every little thing wasn’t doing them any favors. Kevin especially. “Sit down.” 

Kevin sat down petulantly. Nicky tried to stifle bubbling laughter. Aaron strangled his blanket like it was Neil’s neck.

“I’ll leave you to decide.”

Neil retreated to the back of the van. He figured an argument about to erupt and had no desire to be in the middle of it. Aaron would kick it off because he lived to argue. 

“What the fuck was that?”

“You shot the guy! The least we can do is give him a place to recover,” Nicky insisted. 

“You could have killed him, Aaron,” Kevin snapped. 

“We can’t just bring people in, we don’t have space.”

“It’s not permanent, just until Neil gets back on his feet,” Kevin insisted. 

“It’s not just our choice!”

“You know they wouldn’t turn a hurt kid away,” Nicky cajoled.

“I don’t trust him.”

“It’s going to be fine, Aaron,” Nicky assured cheerfully. 

The silence writhed like an animal in death throes. 

“Neil,” Nicky eventually called from the driver’s seat, “we’re going to Flagstaff.”

“Good enough.”

Just Neil’s luck. A fucking mountain. One way in, one way out. Can’t jump out a window it's above a 7,000-foot drop. Neil seriously contemplated ditching them at the next stop. The greatest deterrent was the stretches of desert bracketing the van as far as the eye could see. A small glimpse of the arid plains that cut through the western part of the country. Vast swathes of nothingness like that were one of the reasons Neil disliked the United States. It was harder to disappear when there was nothing to distract the eye for hundreds of miles but Neil’s figure sprinting into the distance. Elevation had only the advantage of cover - most mountains had trees. 

After days of driving, a forest suddenly appeared as a green line on the flat horizon, growing ever larger as Nicky drove. The trees were massive pines, stretching up and beyond what Neil could view from the square of the windshield. The trunks were sparse with branches and evenly spaced out from each other, almost far enough apart to fit a car through. Nicky drove up the only paved road in sight. 

The incline was gradual. They passed a few small strip malls, truck depots, and a handful of residential neighborhoods half-visible through the trees.

It was an hour before sunset when Neil noticed the first sign pointing towards the summit. Kevin explained that the mountain was separated into two halves by a toll gate, separating the business and residential from the leisurely tourist destination. The safe house was located in a neighborhood at the base of the mountain, just before the summit. Neil was too tired to be relieved that he would not have to escape from a mountain fortress if worse came to worse.

Aaron decided they needed to make one more stop before they went to the safe house. He picked the first Walmart they passed, which conveniently had an enormous attached pharmacy. The bigger the place, the more likely it was to be picked over.

Neil was going to be impressed if Aaron found anything salvageable by way of medication. Neil was hoping that unexciting essentials like stitching supplies would be overlooked. 

“I’ll go with you,” Neil offered, catching Aaron at the door. Kevin was asleep and Nicky was settled in with a cigarette. 

“You can barely walk, cripple,” Aaron sneered. Pretty rich considering Aaron crippled him, if Neil were crippled, which he was not. Neil cannot entertain the possibility of being crippled. Neil was not crippled, he was merely injured. A bullet wound was not the worst of his catalog of injuries. 

“That’s rich coming from a junkie,” Neil quipped in return, invigorated by Aaron’s shocked outrage, “If you pass out in there I’ll have to go in and get you anyway. ”

Neil doubted Aaron would faint in the next ten minutes, but it was still a very real possibility to consider. Aaron’s glare went from withering to furious, his mouth half-open, ready to threaten Neil into silence with words, violence, or both. Neil had no time for Aaron’s drama and obvious inferiority complex, no matter how easily ruffled. 

“Save your breath,” Neil said, fending Aaron off with a shove, “I don’t give a shit about your habit until it becomes a problem for me. Let's keep that from happening, shall we?”

Aaron followed him into the store without a word. Neil snagged some W-D 40 off a popup display. He made a habit of grabbing anyting potentially useful and not too heavy. The pharmacy was raided within an inch of its life. Shelves were overturned, empty bottles scattered around and pills spilled out on the floor. Aaron got on his hands and knees and started frantically picking through the pills, looking for anything he vaguely recognized. Aaron noticed more scattered pills near the back of the store and vaulted over the counter to reach the next pile. Neil watched him shove handfuls into his pockets with shaking hands. Neil gave the shelves a once over, seeing if he needed anything while he was here. Nothing by way of stitching, but some of the basics were still left, hanging from their store displays. Neil pocketed ointment, burn cream, and a single silver crutch. He needed to stay off his leg a much as possible or he might actually cripple himself. If the wound reopened at this point, the pain would be the least of his concerns. 

Neil heard the squealing grind of chalk tablets crumbling to powder under a heavy boot. 

A gun cocked. 

“This is my fucking stash, boy,” a malevolent voice growled, “I’m gonna split you in half.”

A shot was fired. 

Aaron ducked under the counter, barely avoiding the bullet. 

Neil didn’t need to hear anymore. He grabbed Aaron’s sleeve and hauled him to the door. Neil could move faster on the crutch. 

A jug of bleach right next to Neil’s head blew up from the force of a bullet. Neil didn’t break his lopsided stride, going full-tilt for the entrance. They hit the parking lot and Neil started waving his arms over his head, the signal for Nicky to get the car started. Neil was halfway to the van when he noticed Aaron was nowhere to be seen. Neil grudgingly turned back and found that Aaron had stopped abruptly a few feet from the entrance. He was patting down his legs like he was frisking himself. 

Probably making sure he got enough pills to tide him over. Neil had no patience for addicts. 

Aaron stuffed his hands in and out of his pockets, going so far as to turn them out, effectively scattering the pills across the pavement. 

“No, no, no,” was all Neil heard before Aaron bolted back into the store, towards the pharmacy and the guy that wanted to split him in half in an as-of-yet unknown fashion. 

“Aaron!” Neil yelled, palming his gun as ran-crutched after the biggest idiot he has ever had the misfortune to know. Neil turned the corner of the shelving and saw Aaron crouched on his knees, clutching what looked like a folded piece of paper in both hands. The same paper Neil saw him read incessantly in the van. His shoulders were sagging, body lose with relief. Off guard and distracted. 

Neil watched the barrel of a gun emerge from the back room, behind Aaron. 

A huge finger flicked the safety off and moved to rest on the trigger. 

The barrel stilled in the air, a breath released in preparation to fire. 

Neil shot first.

The gun went off in Neil’s hand, as loud as the motel room in California. 

Neil committed the second murder of his life. 

He did not do it protect Aaron. It was instinct. When someone raised a gun, Neil was presented with a choice. His options were either to shoot first and kill or hesitate and die. 

Neil did not hesitate. 

Aaron did not stop to pick up the pills. 

Neil didn’t remember getting back to the van. 

“I heard a shot,” Nicky said, looking around in alarm, “did something happen?”

Neil came back to his mind in a tidal wave of horror and shame He killed a person and he didn’t know their name. Never even saw their face. His hands started to shake as sweat broke out all over his body.

Nicky tried to pull Neil and his crutch into the van. 

Neil resisted. He always had his bag on him so he walked away. 

Fuck if he was going to let these people turn him into a killer with their incompetence. If there was a Walmart, Neil could find a car to hotwire. If there was nothing viable in the parking lot, he would find somewhere else easily enough. Truck stops littered Arizona. A family car left in a residential neighborhood. Neil had options. 

“Neil,” Nicky’s shouted like he did whenever he spoke, regardless of what he was saying or the size of the space in which he spoke. Neil moved much faster with the crutch. 

“Neil?” 

Kevin voice, groggy and slurred as it always was if he woke up before getting at least ten hours of consecutive sleep. 

Neil paused. He wanted to ignore Kevin, but he also wanted to know him. Under different circumstances, Neil might have stayed and followed Kevin to wherever he wanted to go so much. In another life, Neil might have done everything in his power to help Kevin accomplish the goal he was seeking so doggedly. Standing in an abandoned parking lot on the edge of civilization, Neil was in no way prepared to kill for Kevin. Staying was never a real option for Neil. Not a sustainable one. Neil needed to be alone, for his safety and everyone else’s. Mom understood that, but even with all her knowledge and skill, Mom could not survive Neil. Kevin didn’t stand a chance. 

“I’m not going to die for you people,” Neil scoffed, his voice trembling, “and you’re not going to last long as it is.” 

“You need us,” Kevin hastened, “we can help each other.”

“I need you,” Neil laughed at the absurdity of the words, “I need you three like I need a coat in the fucking desert,” Neil enunciated emphatically, from experience. He walked the Mojave desert and would not recommend the trip. “Your choices have almost killed me more than once and I’m not going to press my luck for a third go!”

Except Neil’s third strike just came down. He killed rather than let Aaron die and he was increasingly unsure that he did the right thing. Who was Neil to decide who deserved to live? What made Neil think he was entitled to take someone else’s life? Mom always told Neil that he should kill to survive and he believed her but Neil was starting to doubt whether he was worth it. What was the point of being alive if all he was going to do was kill? After IAAN, Neil’s life became more about trying not to kill than fighting to survive and it was getting harder. 

“I saved your ass,” Aaron snarled, undoubtedly referring to Kathy’s demise by Blue. 

“I saved yours back,” Neil hissed, getting in Aaron’s face to make sure his meaning was abundantly clear; Neil’s leg did not thank him for it and neither did Aaron. Technically the pharmacy was the second time he saved Aaron’s ungrateful ass. Neil’s voice was no more than a croak. He was good as a loaded gun and no more deserving of sympathy 

“Don’t make me regret it.”

Too late. Neil was made of regret. 

Behind the argument, the new van died in a scatter of sparks. 

“Son of a fucking bitch!”

“Come again?”

It was the least Aaron could do to shut up and lay off Kevin. To use his near-death experience for some quiet reflection. 

Aaron took one look at Neil and stormed off. 

Kevin shot Neil a pleading look and Neil returned a beleaguered sigh. He walked away.

“Relax,” Neil sighed, “I’m going to look for another car.”

Neil found a usable car in record time and Nicky flat out rejected it on sight. Apparently, no matter how many utility vans Kevin shorted out, Nicky refused to accept a vehicle unless it was large enough for a grown man to lay down flat in the back. 

“I refuse to live like the working poor, Neil,” Nicky said, scandalized.

It was difficult for them to find vehicles that met Nicky’s criteria. 

Neil eventually scrounged up a news van in a negligible state. Kevin dismissed it for a wreck on sight, but he lacked creativity. The cable antennae was long broken off to a short, sharp nub and someone painted over the news channel insignia with a splotch of rust red paint. The equipment in the back was trashed, which made it easier to remove but no less heavy. Aaron refused to help, so Neil dumped a control panel the size of a keyboard into his lap. 

“Thanks,” Neil smirked as he wiped his hands off on his pant legs. Aaron was struggling under the machine, trying to wrestle it into submission, when Neil jumped down from the back and deemed the van ready for repurposing. Withdraw made Aaron weak. He squawked until Nicky came to help him up. 

Kevin and the cousins spent almost moving their outrageous number of superfluous belongings into the new van. Including Kevin’s complete set of hand weights and exercise bands. At Neil’s dubious glance, Kevin proceeded to explain, at length, how Neil needed to stay in shape regardless of the state of the world. Neil tactfully ignored Kevin until he went away to work out with every piece of his equipment in Neil’s periphery. Nicky was distracted, in a decorating franzy, blankets hanging from his arms. Aaron was watching Nicky without comment. 

All the while Neil lingered in hesitation by a cement curb stop. Neil shifted his weight back and forth on his bad leg, testing how long he could stand unaided before he had to fall back on the crutch. Neil counted out a few more seconds of pressure with every attempt, gritting his teeth against the pain. It was vastly improved from his misadventure at the quarry but still unreliable. The rough two weeks he spent in the van were enough time to get his leg underneath him for longer than a second, at least. He could leave if he really needed to. Whether his leg would hold up longterm was a problem for the future. Right now, Neil had bigger concerns. 

If Neil was killing with a gun it was only a matter of time before he resorted to unravel someone’s mind. 

Neil tried to edge away from the van slowly. Kevin noticed him immediately. Neil barely made it to the back bumper before Kevin caught his arm and pulled him back to the red splattered van. Nicky grabbed Neil’s other arm and the two of them lifted him off his feet and into the back. Kevin shut the doors in Neil’s face. Neil 

“Just for a day or two, to rest up,” Nicky cajoled as he took the driver’s seat, “we won’t force you to stay, I promise.”

“Fuck off and die,” Aaron mumbled from under a blanket where he lay, fabric pulled over his face like a corpse. 

“We can help each other,” Kevin said, “everything's better with a team on your side.”

Neil was tired of people handing out promises as if trust came for free. 

He went with them. He could have fought them. Fought Kevin and Nicky. He could have forced them to let him go at gunpoint. It would take nothing more than a brush of Neil’s hand for all three of them to let him go willingly and drop him off wherever he wanted. He might as well use his mind to force them right now, if he was prepared to live that way. 

The car had a few cassettes left in the glove box. Nicky put one in after Kevin painstakingly explained how a compact cassette player worked. Nicky knew the song that came on and sang along with gusto, trying to draw everyone into singing with him even though he was the only one that knew the words. Neil waited for Aaron to explode. The blanket-shrouded lump was still and quiet. Neil knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Neil stayed because he wanted to find out where the three of them were going and no other reason. He spent too much time wondering what all of them wanted to badly that could possibly get the three of them to agree on anything. To speak civilly toward one another long enough to make a decision at all. The decision being mostly Kevin and Aaron bickering back and forth until Nicky took one side over the other and they all walked away to mope in their respective corners. 

Mostly, Neil was very interested in the content of the slip of paper Aaron was willing to die for. The piece of paper that Neil inadvertently killed for. 

Neil got in the van because he needed a shower and they have running water. 

Nicky guided the van up the single two-lane road from the pharmacy to the summit. Neil watched miles and miles of trees with nothing to see but more forest and a long series of abandoned houses. The abandoned ones were the easiest to see, perfect and innocuous shells to hide the gaping emptiness inside. Families forced to flee, leaving everything behind in a desperate attempt to escape the camps. When the state came for your children with a badge and a warrant, it was either hand them over or get the hell out of town. Neil imagined the families that once lived there, the ones that loved their children enough to defy the world for their child's sake at risk to their own life. He pictured them lounging on a beach in Fiji, far away from the consequences of IAAN. The rest of the houses were harder to stomach. The burned-out carcasses of homes and half-demolished buildings that really stuck in Neil memory. He spent too much time on that ride wondering what happened to the people that lived in the houses and if they were still inside when their homes were destroyed. He wondered if the houses were destroyed because the people that lived there were hiding something from the new status quo. Something too important to part with, no matter the cause. For Mom, that was Neil and she died for it, leaving Neil alone with his cursed life.

Neil watched the long unending line of fencing bracketing almost every property. The fencing gave the miles and miles and miles of houses still standing an eerily similar look as they flashed by Neil's window.

Eventually, Nicky pulled off the main road and onto a side street that seemed too small to be a full neighborhood. A bush of trees cut off the road and it ended with a curb. There were three houses with access to the road that Neil could see. Nicky parked at the third, the closest to the treeline. Neil immediately had a problem. The van was visible from the road.

"Nicky, you can't park here."

"Neil, this is our spot," Nicky said, smiling dismissively.

"The van is visible from the road," Neil insisted, trying to impart the paramount importance of not being seen into Nicky's thick skull.

"So?"

"Are you or are you not trying to keep a low profile?"

Nicky looked confused like the question was outside his comprehension. 

"If people in passing cars see the van, they'll know you're here," Neil enunciated clearly and spoke slowly, hoping that would be enough to wake Nicky up to the nightmarish reality he has been living in for the last year.

"It's not a safe house if the people coming after you can see your garish interview van from the main road."

"Our garish interview van," Nicky insisted, scandalized and unconvinced, "thanks to Kevin," Nicky glared at him playfully, "we've changed vans like, twice since we ran into Kathy and you said the other ones were nobodies so," Nicky shrugged, "no way they can keep track of all that." 

Nicky was serene. Entirely secure in his analysis and unconcerned that something might go wrong. Kevin just stared at Neil in sullen silence. Aaron was smirking. And Neil knew then that he was outvoted. On their heads be it. He was not going to jump in and save their asses when shit hit the fan because someone was tracked them .

The house was a simple two-story box with a modest back yard with a large polished wood patio and a child’s treehouse. A tire swing hung from a low branch. 

Neil exited the van cautiously. 

The house itself was meticulously maintained glossy, undamaged paint and giant windows cleaned to a shine. Neil saw the subtle golden glow around the edge of the frame that signified blackout curtains. Aaron walked right to a set of bulkhead doors protruding from the ground next to the house a few feet from the van. The hatch was a welcome sight for Neil, who had escaped more than one building out a basement exit. Neil went in last after he watched Aaron, Nicky, and Kevin descend into the darkness.

* * *

A series of exposed light bulbs flickered on when Nicky pulled a string hanging from the ceiling. The flickering fluorescents illuminated a skinny hallway that ended at a wall with one turn. 

A woman, petite and round, came around the corner at a jog. All Neil saw was a flash of fast-moving clothing. A blur of motion with malicious intent. Neil reacted on instinct, on edge after shooting the faceless stranger in the Pharmacy. 

Neil’s gun came up, and he fired. 

Aaron slammed into Neil’s side and Neil nearly went down. 

Aaron managed to send the shot into the wall instead of the girl. 

The air tasted of metal and the light bulbs above their heads went out in a shower of sparks, overcharged to bursting by Kevin’s shock. 

Heat suffused Neil’s body and he was hyper-aware of his rigid, unmoving grip on the gun. A shiver slithered down his spine at the consequences of his almost-action. That was not a faceless stranger in a Walmart Pharmacy about to shoot someone right in front of him. That was someone that Kevin and Nicky and Aaron knew - someone that helped them. It was an unarmed woman, crying into the sudden dark. 

“Katelyn!” Aaron’s stricken voice.

“I’m okay,” came the slurred reply, “I’m not hurt.” 

Neil tried not to panic in a dark enclosed space with six virtual strangers and only a vague way out in the pitch black. 

“Kevin, you seriously gotta cool it, we’re almost out of lightbulbs,” Nicky reprimanded tiredly. 

Kevin mumbled an apology into the dark. 

A bright light poured into the hall, the same corner Katelyn appeared from. The light brightened as it got closer, heralding a woman in a house dress bearing a powerful LED lantern in one manicured hand. The opposite was propped on her apron-wrapped hips. 

“Don’t you worry, Kevin sweetheart,” crooned her warm southern droll, “we got plenty more where that came from.” 

“What the fuck is your problem,” Aaron snarled at Neil, suddenly a visible target. Neil had no doubt that he would have rushed Neil if his arms were not wrapped around the terrified girl with watering eyes, “you almost killed her!”

Neil was down to eight bullets. 

None of the three of them deigned to inform Neil that there were other people living in their safe house with them. Their rushed conversation in the van suggested it, but Neil forgot in the scramble after the Pharmacy. Neil was jumpy, as he always was when he and Mom scoped out a new place to stay for a night or two. Moving that fast around a corner was threatening to Neil, even though none of his father’s people would expose themselves that way. The guilt felt like a hand around Neil’s neck. He held every muscle tense to keep from trembling, from giving away his fear at what he’d almost done. Neil’s gaze darted to the older woman, waiting for her to make a retaliatory move. To kick him out. To shot him point-blank. 

Nothing happened. Neil slowly realized that they were all just standing there watching him like he was a bomb set to blow. 

“That sounds familiar,” Neil said, his gun still held aloft, “and who are you?”

“Katelyn,” she said, “just Katelyn.” 

She was crying. Her eyes flared unnatural Green behind her tears, following the arc of his gun with her gaze like she could calculate the bullet’s trajectory in her head. Maybe she could. Greens were supposed to be smart, after all. 

Neil felt a moment of paralyzing doubt. What would a Green see in him? 

“I’m Marlene Louise Hernandez and you are in my house, young man! You will not go around waving a loaded gun in the air, do you understand me?” 

Neil concentrated on loosening his grip and lowering his arm.

Neil was unpleasantly reminded of Mom. He flinched and responded immediately brisk order. Marlene was shorter than Mom, dressed in bright clothing and topped with big hair. She stood at the juncture of the same corner Katelyn came careening around. Neil noticed the bullet hole in the wallpaper next to Marlene. The wall Neil put a bullet through. The same bullet that almost killed Katelyn within her mother’s home. 

One of Marlene’s feet tapped the floor with impatience. 

“It was my fault, Mama,” Katelyn standing under her own power but holding Aaron’s hand, “I snuck up on him.”

“Mhm,” Marlene hummed doubtfully, “we have a rule, no carrying in the house, honey. Hand it over, now. It goes in the safe with the rest.”

Neil switched the safety on and held the gun out to Marlene by the barrel. 

The woman neatly released the clip and pulled out the slide, checking the chamber for a bullet. She separated the two pieces and disappeared them into different pockets in her apron. 

“You’ll get it back, hon,” Marlene promised Neil with warm doe eyes, “just ask before you go. No kids are held against their will in my house, but we gotta have some rules, you know.”

Neil watched her warily. 

“Do you have a shower?”

“I’ll show him the bathroom,” Kevin offered quickly. A hand landed on Neil’s shoulder, uncomfortably close to his collar. Another wrapped in a vise around his arm. Neil lacked the weight and muscle to resist Kevin’s grip as he pulled Neil past Marlene, briefly in the dark as they left the lamp behind. He sure as hell struggled in Kevin’s grasp until Kevin pushed Neil up a flight of stairs. He wasn’t going to risk breaking his neck or worsening his leg. They emerged into an elaborate kitchen burnished in soft golden light. Neil heard Nicky laugh distantly behind them, along with the faint hum of conversation.

“Stop it,” Kevin whispered in Neil’s ear, “I’m trying to help you.” 

“Off a fucking cliff, you’ll help me,” Neil scoffed. Kevin could barely help himself. Any help he offered Neil was tainted by his own incompetence. 

“Why do you have to be so difficult?”

“It’s in my nature.” 

Kevin snorted in derision. He dragged Neil down the first corner off the kitchen. It was a sparsely decorated guest room with two twin beds. Kevin dropped Neil unceremoniously onto the carpet floor. 

“This isn’t the bathroom,” Neil moaned, genuinely aggrieved. 

“How are you here, Nathaniel?”

“Don’t call me that,” Neil bristled, “my name is Neil.”

“What’s the point of aliases at the end of the world, Neil?” Kevin mocked, “everything is destroyed.”

Kevin was wearing out Neil’s goodwill fast.

“Old habits die hard.”

The people looking for Neil only got more powerful without the rule of law to maneuver around. Kevin was painfully naive if he thought a lack of infrastructure stopped anyone with real power from moving capital and exerting influence. To people that already worked outside the boundaries of civil society and the law, the end of governmental authority must have been like Christmas

Neil stared at Kevin, trying to find a shadow of the imperious boy he once knew in the man that looked a second from falling apart at the seams. Neil took control of the conversation. 

“This isn’t the place you were looking for, is it?”

Kevin jolted, surprised and taken aback by Neil’s average observational skills. Kevin picked at his dry lips with his teeth as he tried to think of something to say, a clever word or a smooth lie. Kevin was utterly transparent in his emotions, telegraphing them for the whole room to enjoy. 

“What makes you think we’re looking for something?”

“That’d be the maps you stare at all the time.”

Kevin looked scandalized as if Neil caught him out. Neil found it hard to believe that Kevin really considered himself stealthy. Kevin spread the maps out on the road every other day, in full view of God and everybody. He walked into a goddamn branch and nearly knocked himself out the day after Neil met him, and he went to bed at the same time every evening and woke up every morning at the crack of dawn. Kevin’s anxiety was so severe he needed someone to go with him every time he left the van, including when he went into the woods to relieve himself.

Apparently, he was only talented in a controlled environment under very specific circumstances. Useless for anything but Exy and killing complex machines. 

“Kevin, you are the opposite of covert. Your face speaks volumes and you turn your whole torso, not just your head when you stare at me like a creep.”

Kevin scowled.

“Now if you’d kindly shut the fuck up and show me where the bathroom is, I would appreciate it.”

“We’re going to talk later,” Kevin said as he opened the door and pointed vaguely down the hall.

“Whatever you say,” Neil snapped as he limped on his crutch from the room and went searching for the actual bathroom. 

He found Aaron first. Behind him, Neil saw an open door and the silhouette of a white room with glass walls. It was the bathroom, the light over the sink like a beacon guiding the way to nirvana. The short blonde canker sore stood like a sentry in the hallway, between Neil and the bathroom. If he didn’t move in a minute, Neil was going to punch him in the face, damn the consequences. Katelyn hovered behind him, a reluctant accomplice to Aaron’s combative, drama-seeking ways. 

“Can we do this later?” Neil said by way of introduction, “I need to take a shower.” 

Aaron started at Neil, his nose curled in disgust, as it had been even before Neil had to go much longer than two weeks without a shower. 

“You’re going to apologize to Katelyn.”

Interesting that Aaron thought Neil gave a shit about his girlfriend’s feelings. 

“Think so?”

“Yes.”

Neil lapsed into silence like he was working up to an apology.

“You haven’t even apologized to me,” Neil settled on, enjoying the red flush of rage that colored Aaron’s neck and face, “and unlikely you, I didn’t even hit her.”

“This is her parent’s home —

“I’m happy to leave at any time,” Neil lied blatantly, desperate for a shower and a solid day of sleep. And a fucking leg that worked. 

“I’d go right now,” Neil enlightened Aaron, “except you shot me in the motherfucking leg, which means going out there alone is tantamount to suicide,” Katelyn flinched and Aaron had the decency to look slightly ashamed, “I’m here because of you, Aaron. If you hadn’t taken that shot I would have been gone that first day and that could have been the end of it. But no, I have to be trapped in this hell, because of you, with people that have nearly gotten me killed on more than once occasion. I’m willing to let the shooting slide, but I have a condition,” Neil mused, “how about you apologize to me for the hell you’ve put me through.” 

If Kathy lived, she would post her sighting of Kevin on the tracer database. If the two from the gorge even half-assed their jobs, Neil was going to end up in the database. If Neil’s description went public, the Butcher’s people would catch him in a matter of days. He may actually die from the bullet in his leg, if indirectly. 

“This house is three thousand square feet,” Aaron grumbled, “it’s hardly hell.” 

Katelyn elbowed Aaron and pulled him close to whisper for a few seconds. Neil waited patiently more out of spite than actually giving a shit about Aaron’s apology. Aaron gave in to Katelyn’s gentle prodding. 

“I’m sorry, Neil,” Aaron said through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry, Katelyn,” Neil acquiesced, “but you should really be more careful. You never know who you’ll meet these days,” Neil glanced at Aaron, “or who will creep through your back door at night.”

Neil brushed between them without another word. 

Aaron could go fuck himself. Katelyn could help him if she really wanted to. Neil needed to shower and sleep off the persistent ache of his leg. He could not care less about anything else. A few days of solid rest in an actual bed instead of the bed of a moving van and Neil might be able to leave this place never look back. He’d find his bearings and start running again. He had no idea how long they planned to stay here. Neil needed to leave within the week unless he wanted to invite the Butcher to dinner. 

Neil finally got the bathroom door closed behind him. 

He savored the sound of a lock engaging between his back and everyone else. The solitude was immediately blissful and nerve-wracking at the same time. He couldn’t trust what they would do when he wasn’t watching them. Neil took the quickest shower of his life and changed into his last clean set of clothes. Of his eight outfits, three were bloodstained and the rest were too filthy to wear. He was overdue for laundry and they had electricity. 

Most of the house was dark when Neil emerged from the bathroom. Neil heard the sound of distant laughter and tentatively followed until he saw light spilling out into the hall, coming from the kitchen. 

Neil took a bracing breath and crutched into the judgment of the light.

Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron sat around a giant oak table with Katelyn and Marlene.

Neil’s arrival drew eyes and provoked silence. The conversation died around the table as everyone turned their attention toward Neil. He resisted the urge to squirm under the scrutiny of so many curious eyes. Kevin pulled out the chair next to him in a pointed invitation. Neil went over and sat down. Aaron ignored Neil and Nicky was in the middle of a conversation with Marlene. Katelyn’s father didn’t say anything, he just watched. 

“Your sister was dating a senator, Marlene?” Nicky asked, looking down the table to her. She smiled fondly at him and continued her story. 

“Anyway, I was telling my sister that she needed to have a handy person, man or woman, come to her house and take a look at —

Neil was distracted when Katelyn put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a painted-flower plate in front of him. To Neil, it was perfection. He thanked her genuinely and she gave him a tentative smile in return. 

“Well, boys, aren’t you going to introduce us to your new friend?”

A masculine voice spoke from the hall. Neil caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man, likely Katelyn’s father, standing in the doorframe. He over easily six feet and nearly as broad as the door. 

"Come and sit down, Walter," Marleen said. He moved toward the only free chair - directly across from Neil. “You need to eat something.” 

Neil shot to his feet fast enough to knock his chair over backwards. The hardwood crashed loudly to the tile floor. Neil watched carefully as the man that reminded him too much of his father cross the kitchen. Neil quickly righted his chair brought his plate to the sink on the other side of the room as an excuse to put as much space between himself and Katelyn’s father as humanly possible. Neil reluctantly went back to the table and stood next to his chair.

“Hi, Hernandez,” Nicky said, “this is Neil, we met him on the road.”

Literally. The intense irony was almost enough to cut through the haze of fear clouding Neil’s thoughts. 

“Welcome to my home, Neil,” Hernandez held out his hand, over the table. “My name is Walter, but you can call me Hernandez. Everyone else does and I prefer it that way, actually,” the man laughed. 

Neil glanced down at the hand but did not reach out and shake it. Eventually, Hernandez’s hand retreated. 

“I can’t imagine why,” Neil said idly. Hernandez cracked a small smile that did not appear irritated or latently malicious. 

“That was rude,” Kevin whispered in Neil’s ear after he grabbed a handful of Neil’s shirt and pulled him back down into the seat. Neil was not sure if Kevin was referring to the rejected handshake or his commentary on Hernandez’s given name. Neil sat reluctantly, mostly because of Kevin’s death-grip on his nicest shirt. Neil wondered about the true extent of the impact Neil’s familiar face had on Kevin’s fragile psyche. 

“No harm done,” Hernandez understood, “a cold’ll kill you these days. Can’t be too careful,” he winked at Neil and sat down at the head of the table. Katelyn gave him a PB and J with the crust cut off and a kiss on the cheek. Hernandez returned the gesture after taking the plate. He patted his wife on the hand and she flashed him a quick smile without missing a beat in her storytelling.

"Need somewhere to store your bag, Neil?" Hernandez nodded at Neil's duffle, perpetually by his side and currently shoved under the nice wooden dining chair Neil sat in. Neil shook his head. Grabbing his bag and pulling it into his lap was a defensive gesture. Hernandez put up two hands, like surrender, and turned away to pay attention to his wife's story. 

“How much did you tell them about yourself?” Neil asked Kevin in quiet French. Kevin stared at Neil for a long moment before replying in the same language.

“Nothing real,” Kevin promised, “nothing about the Ravens or the Nest.”

Kevin’s mouth puckered like he swallowed a lemon. A stone of foreboding dropped off in Neil’s stomach.

“What exactly did you say?”

“They recognized me from TV but I didn’t tell them anything else.”

“Boys,” Marlene called to them from across the table, “excuse me, boys?” she waved her hand in the air to get their attention in case they missed her holler. “It’s rude to exclude others from your conversation. If it’s personal, discuss it on your own time. This is dinner time and dinner time is family time.”

And that was that. Neil obeyed and ate his meal a silence accustomed to solitude. The sandwich was not nearly enough to chip away at the hunger lodged in his gut. Marlene got up from the table to move a crockpot off the stove and onto a stone plate to cool. Apparently the sandwich was just the appetizer.

“Dinner is served,” Marlene said as she carried the cooling pot over, “I hope everybody likes lasagna.”

Two dinners in one night had Neil counting his lucky stars. So much so that he didn’t notice the atmosphere changing, the attention turning in his direction like a hurricane was pulled to shore by the tide. Neil was too busy scraping forkfuls onto his empty plate. Neil tucked in with his silverware but only got in a bite or two before he heard his name. It was easy to miss with the savory flavors exploding along his taste buds. 

“Neil?”

Judging by the look of Marlene’s face, he missed whatever question she meant to ask him. Or had asked him, and he hadn’t noticed. Neil carefully swallowed his most recent mouthful and mentally prepared himself to conjure up a simple, unincriminating lie. It was easy to pretend he was talking to Mom with the way Marlene commanded a conversation and clearly did not take no for an answer. Neil was not sure if the comparison made it easier or harder to lie to her face. 

“Where you from, sweetheart? You look positively done in.”

“Millport, Ma’am. Middle of nowhere,” the best lies were the ones with reiteration. Say anything enough and you’ll eventually begin to believe that it’s true. Neil saw Nicky nodding at the familiar information out of the corner of his eye. 

“Practically from California, kid,” Hernandez groused commiserate like he was letting Neil know he dodged a bullet, “but I know Millport, I used to teach at the high school and I coached the varsity Exy team, unimpressive that it was,” he joked. 

He tried not to bristle at the mention of California, though his nose was flooded with the scent of gas and burning flesh.

“Small world, isn’t it?”

Just Neil’s fucking luck. Neil ended up at the one table in the state that was owned by someone who’d actually stepped foot in Millport before the collapse of civilization. Even worse, Hernandez frequented the part of Millport Neil would have been seen attending - if he spent more than a night passing through - which he hadn’t been planning on before running into Nicky. After that unlikely encounter, Neil was caught in the whirlwind of nonsense, one near disaster after the other, from the depot store to the vans and the tracers and the Pharmacy. Too many close calls for a lifetime and all for the sake of hopeless charity cases because they probably saved him from a torturous death at Lola’s hands even though they accidentally shot him in the process. 

Neil told himself to relax. 

He had no reason to get so worked up. There were no Police or CPS to call on a kid that gave insufficient evidence of a stable, healthy home life. Hernandez wasn’t going to call the tracers to his house, where he was hiding his own IAAN child from what remained of the state. Even if Katelyn was a non-issue, there was no one to call. 

“And now you’re here,” Marlene said cheerfully, Neil tried for a small smile and hopefully landed somewhere near wholesome. Judging by Nicky’s wince, Neil missed the mark by miles. “How long did you spend in Millport? Victor and I got married there and Katelyn grew up in that school system.” 

“We bought this house and sold our place in Millport fairly recently, right after Katie got accepted to Palmetto State. The cheer team was ready to go to nationals and Katie was invited because she made Varsity her freshman year," he looked at his daughter with pride, "someday soon baby!" 

Hernandez grinned as he explained like he actually thought the world was on its way to righting itself. That some form of equilibrium would be restored and something vaguely resembling what life was like before IAAN would reemerge. Neil felt bad for him. Katelyn offered her father a small, sad smile.

“I think it was summer,” Neil coughed uncomfortably after a moment of thought. He remembered the town of Millport clearly. Every window in the city was broken and more than half of the town center was burned to the ground, including the high school. Neil hummed in consideration until he remembered that people were dying and he should definitely be taking his life more seriously. Neil coughed and nodded, “school was definitely out.”

Hernandez started laughing. Truly slapping-his-leg laughing. Between the escalating jaggs of chortling and the brief gasps of air stolen in between, Hernandez managed to speak. Neil did not laugh but he tried to look pleasant.

Marleen began her questions anew. 

“What about your parents Neil? You said you moved to Millport. Where from, and who were you with? Not by yourself at your age, I’m sure.”

“Marlene,” Hernandez tried to intervene, “don’t interrogate the boy while he’s trying to eat.”

“Oh, shut it, you! These the same questions I ask everybody. We have to make sure we keep the right sort of folk under our roof, Walter.”

At once, Neil bore the scrutiny of the whole table. Each asking the same question: was Neil worthy of their hospitality.

“It was me and my Mom,” Neil told them, “we left Seattle together.” 

Neil picked at his lasagna, cutting the pasta pieces smaller and smaller for something to do with his hands while his mind replayed the worst part of his life. Neil ate a few bites to keep the bile down before he spoke. 

“There was an accident,” Neil hesitated, “I moved to Millport alone.” 

Silence reigned for a few long moments as Neil’s words sunk in. Marlene obviously felt like she stepped in it when the silence grew painfully awkward. No one knew what to say to the orphan kid with the dead Mom. 

“And then you met Nicky and the boys,” Maureen said like it was a solution to Neil’s problems, “and where was your Mama from then? Before she passed.”

“Mom,” Katelyn’s eyes bugged, _“hacer cállate!”_

“Manners baby,” Maureen pointed out in return, “I’m just trying to get to know the boy! And who knows, maybe we have some ancestors in common.”

Marleen gestured to her tall hair, which was a startling red shade closer to blood than Neil’s own. Neil doubted any connection regardless of Maureen’s red hair. She winked every time she made eye contact with Neil like it was a secret between them. Neil felt the combined weight of Kevin and Nicky’s stares. 

“I’m fine,” Neil gulped, his voice strangled.

Neil preoccupied himself with finishing off his meal, practically licking the plate. He sat in silence and waited for the meal to finish. Aaron was unusually silent, answering questions in a few words as possible. Kevin looked pale but he was more than willing to talk to Hernandez about Exy. Neil pretended not to listen and soaked up every word. They were talking about the last Raven’s game before federal funding was cut off to US colleges. The Raven’s won, of course. Neil did not know how it was possible to be undefeated in anything. Scratch that - cheating. Cheating was how. 

“Marlene put you with Kevin, second door to the right off of the downstairs bathroom. You know where the shower is, kid. Towels are in the hall closet. Help yourself to anything else you find in there.”

Neil knew a dismissal when he heard one. He had a brief pang of gratitude for Hernandez. 

“May I be excused?”

“Of course,” Marlene cooed, “what a polite boy.”

It was not hard to find the room - the was the same guest bedroom Kevin dropped him in early that evening. Neil did not bother undressing, or getting under the blankets before he fell asleep. Kevin’s stumbling arrival woke Neil less than an hour later. He collapsed onto the bed in a drunken mess and promptly passed out cold. Neil picked Kevin’s legs up off the flow and swung them onto the bed, his feet left dangling over the edge. 

It took Neil two passes to learn the layout of the house in the dark. Katelyn’s room was next to her parent’s on the second floor, the opposite side of the house. Every other room was unoccupied, save for the guest bedroom down the hall from Kevin and Neil.

That night, Neil stole into Aaron and Nicky’s shared guestroom and rifled through Aaron’s cargo pants pockets where he found them draped over the back of a desk chair. Aaron’s sleep was restless. He tossed back and forth in an effort to make his overly-tight skin more comfortable. Aaron was going to reach critical very soon. Nicky snored on oblivious, sprawled out on his bed and completely dead to the world, much like Kevin in the other room. 

After a few minutes of searching, Neil gave up on Aaron’s clothes and crept over to the short blonde’s bed.

A piece of paper peaked out from Aaron’s back pocket. 

It was too easy to slip the note out of Aaron’s pocket before he could flip over to face the wall. 

Neil took the letter to the bathroom. He locked the door, turned on the light, and carefully unfolded the note. 

_I’ll find you_

_Don’t die_

_Andrew_

The letters were a faded rust color, the sentences wonky and uneven.

It was written in blood.

Andrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE Katelyn is a Hernandez! 
> 
> Nora never gave Katelyn a surname in the TFC universe (read: cause Neil didn’t give a shit about her life) so I took it upon myself to flesh out her identity. I loved the idea that Katelyn and Neil were connected through Hernandez, despite being none the wiser to that mutual parental figure. It was a fun concept to reflect on when I compared my AU to the Foxhole Court canon. 
> 
> Katelyn being a Hernandez is my headcanon for all TFC fic I write, reinforced by the idea that Hernandez learned about the potential of the dead-last Exy team at Palmetto because Katelyn is a Vixen and would have told him about the Foxes. It is believable to me because Hernandez, someone who works with youth, would know better than to tell his family about meeting Neil or sending Wymack Neil’s file because Neil’s business is Neil’s business and they dodn’t need to know. 
> 
> A thousand pardons for any misused Spanish among the two words I had the nerve to include. I am your typical monolingual American and suitably embarrassed by that fact. 
> 
> I digress
> 
> Phew - this chapter was a serious handful. Whenever I got anywhere, I ended up shuffling everything around and getting no further in terms of plot. This chapter doubled in length twice over that way. I fought with it endlessly until the final edit. At that point, everything came together so quickly that I was on an editing roll and accidentally stayed up all night right before my summer class’ final exam. 
> 
> Andrew has just made his first appearance - sort of. I went to great lengths to squeeze a mention of him into this chapter for you guys. As for Andrew's actual person, you'll have to keep waiting lol. 
> 
> Thank you
> 
> Shtare


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are almost idyllic in the Hernandezs's happy home. 
> 
> Enjoy

It was the morning after their arrival in Flagstaff and Neil woke before dawn, surrounded by darkness and drenched in cold sweat. The nightmare was a bad one. Neil remembered little, only Lola’s cold smile, the gleaming shine of knife blade under a swaying light and a sense of omnipresent dread. That feeling stuck with Neil as he sat up in bed, mingling with the panic of confusion. For a moment, Neil forgot how he got to this unfamiliar place. 

In the distance, Neil heard the _thump_ of footsteps and the grinding whine of a coffee maker, indicative of strange people with dubious intentions. Neil was wide awake and on his feet in the span of a moment. He was immediately disturbed by the fact that he was in a bed. His chest was tight and his breath labored. Neil panicked into the unknown - he shouldn’t be here -

He prepared to bolt. 

One of Kevin’s snores cut through the silence, the noise loud enough to make Neil jump. The shock was a relief that flooded Neil’s system with endorphins. 

Another loud snore pierced the early morning silence. 

Neil was swiftly reminded of how he came to be in the dark room. 

He was reminded of the less-than-gentle rocking of the van when Nicky drove. 

Kevin’s incessant complaining, exacerbated by his tendency to short circuit essential electronics. 

The perpetual stick up Aaron’s ass and the man Neil killed to save the midget asshole’s life.

Neil’s panic morphed into resigned irritation, both at himself and the cousins. Neil shouldn’t be here. A serious of cursed coincidences and stupid decisions somehow made tagging along with the disaster trio Neil’s best option. He was here and now he had to deal with it and hopefully not get killed in the process.Neil grabbed his lone crutch and left the dark room and Kevin’s snores behind. 

His leg was stiff and painful. The skin around the wound was tight and pulled with every movement. Neil grit his teeth. He did his best to ignore the pain and as he limped near-silently down the dark hallway.

Neil needed to give the house a thorough look over for any potential escape routes. Neil checked after everyone went to bed last night, but there was a chance he failed to notice something on his first time around. 

As it stood, Neil had a dozen ways out of the house and two ways off the property.

The Hernandez house was in a poor geographic location and a conspicuous set-up. Not only could the house be been seen from the main road, but it was also half-surrounded by an impressive swamp that grew a veritable forest of impassable Japanese knotweed. The plants had dense, difficult-to-sever stocks that grew upwards of six feet under proper conditions. Neil would need a machete and a pair of waders to even consider escaping through the dense wetland. Anything would work in an emergency, but Neil was trying to avoid popping his stitches and losing all his belongings in the quick-sand like mud. 

With the swamp taking up a good portion of the land around the property, Neil was left with the main road or the absent neighbor’s backyards, which were also visible from the road. 

As it was, Nicky’s safe house was not very safe. 

On top of being the worst safehouse in existence, Katelyn’s house was weird and kind of confusing for Neil. Every room was decorated within an inch of its life. All available flat surfaces were used to display tchotchkes of various size and origin. The most common feature was the abundance of large, cursive motivational words carved out of wood and patchily painted white. Neil had never been so besieged by peddled positivity in his life and he went to high school. Everywhere Neil looked, he was told to _Dream_ and _Believe_ and _Love._ The forceful enthusiasm was exhausting and put Neil is a poor state of mind to stumble upon a sideboard packed with statues. A pack of ceramic dogs, boldly and poorly painted, romped alongside disturbing featureless wooden carvings of people embraced in intimate positions. Photographs lined the walls of every room, cluttering vertical spaces already interspersed with recreations of famous paintings and hanging decorative plates. Everywhere Neil looked, there was something to potentially trip over whilst trying to running away. He could use the decorations as impromptu projectiles if it came down to a close-quarters fight, but that was a poor benefit and no justification. 

By Neil’s standards, the Hernandezes were asking for trouble. Katelyn’s family had infinitely more useless crap than they did beneficial tools or essential provisions. Neil considered saying something to them about their choices. It was dangerous to live so frivolously, especially these days.

Neil ultimately decided against it. 

He had no reason to invite scrutiny and he was in no position to cast judgment.

One thing Neil could not locate was the gun safe Maureen hinted was in the house. 

He had suspicions, but none panned out so far. The basement was the most obvious and defensible option but Neil had trouble finding the entrance. When Neil asked Kevin about the basement, he told Neil that they came in by the basement bulkhead when they arrived. Unless Neil planned on punching through drywall to get to the safe, the skinny hallway of the basement was a bust. Neil quickly ruled out the den, the living room, and Katelyn’s room as unsafe. 

The master bedroom was the last obvious option. 

Neil had no desire to check his theory, but in the case of an actual emergency, he would have no time to second guess. He needed to know where his gun was being held before he had run. Neil could not afford to waste any time and the gun was one of the only things standing between Neil and certain death.

The other, Neil refused to contemplate. 

Neil hated his life. 

It was not easy for Neil to creep by the dark, empty kitchen. The earliest hours of the morning painted the corners in a malicious shadow. 

In the dark, every decorative lamp became Lola Malcolm.

The master was the only bedroom upstairs.

The door was cracked open. 

It was difficult to slip into the room without a whisper of fabric, where it was once infinitely easy. The sound of the crutch was only slightly quieter than the sound Neil’s gimping hops would have made. The added weight of his back was cumbersome to balance. Neil limped carefully, never before having put so much effort into being quiet. Neil spent most of his life making as little sound as possible, but he also rarely snuck into other people's bedrooms. Conveniently for Neil, the floor was carpet instead of hardwood like the first floor. I was also much more sparsely decorated. Beyond decorations, the simple space was dominated by a massive king-sized bed, a work desk, and a vanity the size of a station wagon. Right beside a walk-in closet. A mountain of ties hung from the front of the double panel door. Neil edged around the corner of the bed, keeping his back to the wall, as he made his way slowly to the most secure place in the room. 

As he went, Neil kept his eyes away from the two still shapes under blankets.

One of Mom’s early lessons: to avoid being noticed, Neil needed to look down. People could feel the weight of watchful eyes. Neil felt heavy stares on the back of his neck with almost every waking moment of his life. His father’s people had always loitered around the house, eager to teach Neil a lesson with a violent hand. Mom taught him how to dodge those lessons. Hiding was sometimes a better recourse than running. Neil hid in plain sight until IAAN made every short person subject to suspicion.

_If you can see them, they can see you._

Neil turned his back on the bed as he inched past the closet door hinges. Neil had to crane his neck to avoid getting a mouthful of ties. He wrapped a hand around the knob.

Neil turned the handle and pulled the door open -

An inch of movement produced a grinding squeal loud as a blender. Neil winced and stopped. 

The sleeping bodies must have been disturbed. 

Hernandez and Maureen would find him in their bedroom and kill him with his own gun. 

Neil turned his head slowly and watched Hernandez rollover, ending up with his back to Neil. Nothing else happened. Neil stood for a few moments of silence, waiting for a shrill scream or surprised shout. Five minutes of silence passed. 

Satisfied they were still asleep, Neil went into his bag and emerged with the newly added WD-40. Neil marveled at the coincidental convenience, a quality lacking in his life up to this point. Neil was born under a bad star and he wasn’t naive enough to hope that banal serendipity marked a reversal of his fortunes. Instead, Neil carefully oiled the squeaky hinges. The canister made that signature _dollop_ noise every time Neil pressed the plunger. It was too loud. Neil pulled a T-shirt out of his bag and wrapped it around his hand and the head of the cannister. The shirt muffled the sound of the dispensing oil and the canister’s long nozzle kept the grease off Neil’s shirt. When Neil was finished, the hinges of the Hernandezs’s walk-in closet were silent as death. 

Neil opened the door wide, needing the vague light of the windows to see - 

No gun safe, no locker, and no carrying case. Nothing large or secure enough to safely store a firearm.

Neil held in a dejected sigh and wished Nicky left him in the parking lot. 

Neil cased the room up, down, and sideways and he came up empty. There was no gun safe to be found. It was a bluff on Maureen’s part, which presented an entirely new set of problems for Neil. Either they hid the gun loose somewhere innocuous or one of them was carrying it on their person. Neil remembered had Maureen slipped the gun into her apron, seemed familiar with using a handgun. Hernandez seemed like the type to disapprove of weapons in the house. 

Neil checked under the bed on his way out.

Nothing but shoes. 

Neil’s gun was gone. 

The sun was starting to rise.

Neil hastily retreated down the stairs. The kitchen was unchanged. From the hall, Neil could hear the discordant chorus of Nicky and Kevin’s snoring. 

Neil weighed his options and came up with slip and none. 

At least they had a shower.

The Hernandezs’ told Nicky the refrigerator was fair game, but Neil wasn’t the type to go into someone else's fridge between meals and take what pleased, even during the apocalypse. Neil had no problem snagging a few feet of saran wrap from their roll left sitting out of the counter. If Neil could wrap his leg water-tight, so he could shower without destroying his limited supply of gauze and opening his would to major infection. 

Neil propped his leg on one of the tall stood surrounding the kitchen island and carefully wrapped his leg in preparation for another shower. Neil snagged his crutch from where he left it in the guest room and made his way down the hall. 

Neil was shameless when it came to the shower. He’d been at the Hernandez house a day and he had already taken three soaks in the downstairs shower. Katelyn said the shower was exclusively for their use, and Neil was liberal, savoring every moment of icy water. A cold shower was not exactly pleasant, but it also wasn’t a fast-moving German river in the middle of January so Neil couldn’t complain. 

As for the bathroom, it was the weirdest thing Neil had ever seen. 

The downstairs bathroom was raw stone floor-to-ceiling to the degree that Neil felt like he was showering outside. The floor reiterated this idea, as anyone who wanted to shower was forced to stand on a floor of thin wooden slats of peak wood. The showerhead was more like showerheads and Neil counted five. It took Neil forty-five minutes to figure out how to turn the thing on and even then he was almost drowned by the surprise nozzle embedded next by his head. The overhead and forward showerheads were large squares, twice the size of Neil’s head. Nicky loved them and Neil often listened to him wax poetic about rain showers. To Neil, it was gratuitous. He did not understand why someone would want to feel like they were standing under a literal waterfall, complete with buffeting water and very uncomfortable footholds. 

Strange design decisions aside, it was a good setup.

Neil had no plans to stay more than a day or two. The Hernandez family seemed decent. All the more reason for Neil to get out as quickly as possible. Better not to draw these people into his toxic orbit. Neil felt guilty staying even that long.

Neil stopped at the apex of the hallway. 

The bathroom door was hanging open.

The light was off. 

Neil was immediately on guard. He had the crutch, so he could run and if it came down to it he could use the crutch as a weapon. Neil was prepared to beat someone unconscious if that’s what it took. A crutch wasn’t a gun, but it would do in a pinch. 

Neil inched forward, approaching the bathroom slowly - 

A pair of jean-clad legs that appeared in his path. 

Neil almost tripped and was barely able to keep his weight on his good leg.

Neil was reduced to improvising a creative jault, launching himself over the prone person with his one crutch. Neil ended up bouncing off the wall. Neil managed to catch himself between the crutch and his good leg. 

Neil stepped over sprawled legs and found Aaron wheezing and coughing into the cool bathroom tiles next to a puddle of brown vomit. Of course, it was Aaron. After his time in the van, Neil expected nothing less than utmost torture from the blonde midget. 

Aaron twitched and saw Neil out of the corner of his eye. He struggled to get onto his hands and knees. Neil braced himself to get reamed out. Instead, Aaron dry heaved into the only toilet in the hall. 

Aaron left the door open and unlocked, so Neil took that as an invitation. 

He left the door open behind him to clear out the stench. The smell of vomit mixed with the bitter burn of coffee. The repulsive smell was almost enough to drive Neil out of the bathroom entirely. Aaron collapsed back onto his side, legs sprawled. He breathed like someone that just ran a double marathon. Neil gave him a courtesy flush. Coffee made an ugly replacement for stomach bile. An empty mug lay overturned beside him.

Whatever. The mess was secondary. It wasn’t like Beil could shower with Aaron in the room. 

Neil flicked the overhead light on. 

Aaron body was wracked with tremors, his shaking caught somewhere between shiver and seizure. His face and bare back were pale as death and he was sweating bullets. Despite his obvious suffering, Aaron was able to shoot Neil with a murderous glare. 

“Get out.”

Aaron gasped to speak and gagged on his own tongue. He couldn’t get any more words out before he needed to put his head back in the toilet. Aaron was deep into withdrawal without a doubt, though Neil had never seen it personally. Mom spoke harshly of drugs and chemicals. She disapproved of anything that might slow them down. Aspirin was ineffective and alcohol was easy to find. Neil never saw the appeal of something that would make him weaker.

Aaron managed to lift his head and wiped his mouth. He leaned heavily on the toilet and reached for Neil. 

“You can’t tell them,” Aaron wheezed, gripling Neil’s pant leg, “they’ll kick us out if you tell them.” 

Aaron was incoherent but Neil could guess the context. Aaron didn’t want Katelyn parents finding out about his drug use - while he went through withdrawal in their house. Nel wished him the best of luck with that hopeless endeavor. 

“I won’t tell them,” Neil said, and he wouldn’t.

As much as he would love to get Aaron thrown out on his ass, it was better for Neil not to rock the boat. Neil had no interest in peeking under the collective Hernandez hood to see how they felt about their daughter dating someone with a drug habit. Anything to avoid unnecessary conflict. Besides, they have his gun. 

With nothing else to do, Neil hooked Aaron armpits over his elbows and started to tow Aaron down the hallway. Neil was forced to leave his bag in the bathroom to even have a chance at lifting Aaron without going over. 

Aaron grumbled and thrashed weakly, ineffective in fighting back against an injured Neil. Neil would have opted for a fireman’s carry, easier to manage, but he could barely support his own weight on his injured leg nevertheless Aaron’s limp body. He may be short but he was surprisingly heavy. 

Neil dragged Aaron slowly and hoped they didn’t stumble into anyone. 

Neil wanted to get by unseen, so of course, Katelyn appeared in the hall holding a glass of water and a bowl of soup. 

Katelyn was skittish around Neil and refused to meet his eye. Her weariness around Neil was justifiable. She barely managed to stifle her shriek, likely thinking Neil was dragging Aaron’s body out back to be buried. Or burned. Her usual shuffle and twitch combo was replaced by a shrill gasp and a quick flash of weak anger. Katelyn was able to keep quiet but still looked behind Neil and Aaron anxiously to see if she attracted her parents’ attention. Neil assumed Katelyn had a vested interest in not getting her boyfriend kicked out of her own house. 

“What are you doing to him?” 

Katelyn was as horrified with Neil as she was upset by Aaron’s condition. Most distrubed than she was after Neil almost shot her. She probably blamed Neil for her boyfriend’s sudden downturn. 

“I’m helping him,” Neil gritted as he hauled Aaron another inch, “grab his feet.”

“Why would you drag him like that?” Katelyn gasped, appalled, “I thought he was dead!”

Katelyn had clearly never been witness to violence, nevertheless death. Corpses didn’t sweat - piss and moan as much as Aaron. Dragging was too good for him and was Katelyn was just rude. 

“I’m clearly doing this for nefarious purposes” Neil snapped sarcastically, “care to help me the fuck out?”

There was no doubt that Neil was not in peak physical condition on a motherfucking crutch and still wearing blood stained pants. No reason for Katelyn to rub it in. Neil wanted no part in Aaron’s habit yet here he was, cleaning up the mess. Aaron was lucky he puked in the toilet and not on the floor. Neil should wake Nicky and make him drag Aaron’s dead weight around.

Katelyn still didn’t move, staring at Neil with an open mouth and furrowed brow. 

“Is there anywhere for him to detox that your parents won’t hear him kicking and screaming?”

Katelyn sputtered for a few moments. 

“Look, it needs to be done and if you won’t do it, then I have to. Where?”

She eventually realized the wisdom of Neil’s actions and wrapped her arms around Aaron’s ankles. 

“Unfinished basement,” Katelyn said, gesturing down the hall with her chin. With four arms and three legs, the were able to half-carry and half-drag Aaron down the carpeted hallway and up to the door to the basement. Katelyn opened the door and switched on the overhead light to reveal an invisible staircase, a feature Neil hadn’t noticed upon their arrival, that suggested Neil had not seen all of the basement. 

Neil was running through possible ways to get Aaron down the stairs intact when he realized - invisible staircase -

 _Unfinished basement._

Sounds like an ideal place for a gun safe.

He was tempted to let Aaron fall over and watch gravity do its good works - to expedite the process. Katelyn decided that Aaron should walk on his own, like that was going to happen. 

“Baby?” Katelyn cupped Aaron’s face between her hands, tapping one cheek lightly, to get his attention, “baby can you hear me?”

“You’re going to have to hit him harder than that.”

Katelyn gave Neil another of her patented horrified expressions. Neil looked away when her eyes started to well up. 

“Need some help?”

“No,” Katelyn sniffed, “I got it.” 

Katelyn gently patted Aaron’s cheek and worked on getting Aaron into a sitting position. 

A light flicked on in the kitchen. 

“Katelyn?” Hernandez called, “did you put a pot on?”

Katelyn froze like an amateur thief caught in the act. Neil compensated by pushing Aaron onto his back and shoving him down the stairs. Katelyn went after Aaron’s dead weight, practically falling down the stairs trying to keep him from hitting his head. 

When he got no reply from Katelyn, Hernandez peered around the corner. Neil closed the door behind them just in time. 

“Katelyn?”

“It’s Neil,” he replied, resigned to his role as a diversion. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Neil,” Hernandez smiled good-natured smile of a morning person. Someone with something to look forward to. Neil found it hard to relate to Hernandez. 

“Have you seen Katelyn around?”

“Not today, sir.” 

“It’s just Hernandez, Neil,” Hernandez smiled warm and welcoming, “feel free to think of this as your home if you want. I said the same to your friends.” 

Neil was immediately alienated. He lived life on the run for so long that everything else started to look wrong. Nothing about this situation seemed real, or right, or safe. Neil wanted to get out of here. At least to move the car somewhere with better coverage. Nicky might be awake by now, to give Neil the keys. Kevin would sleep until noon, at least, without Exy to give him a deadline and a goal. 

“They’re not my friends.”

Hernandez’s eyebrows rose, clearly doubting Neil’s words, but he kept his opinion to himself. Neil saw the humor in his eyes, along with a glimmer of mischief. 

“I can take a look at that leg if you like.”

“I’m fine.”

Hernandez and Neil stood in silence for another long moment. 

“So Neil, would you mind helping me out today?”

“Sure.” 

Neil was sleeping under his roof. Refusing was not exactly an option. Neil hoped that whatever Hernandez needed help with wasn’t too painful for him. 

“Can I shower first?”

* * *

Hernandez needed help with his garden. 

Hernandez led Neil outside through the sliding glass door set off from the kitchen. Hernandez had a large backyard of mostly open grass. A tall privacy fence that stood sentry along the perimeter and blocked the view of the backyard from the road. The fencing surrounded half the property and aborted along the far portion of the yard where a few small trees took over to obscuring the neighbor’s houses. Without full coverage, the fence offered little security. A small road cut around the corner of the house and beyond that, the swamp.

Hernandez led Neil around the side of the house. On the other side, Neil saw the conspicuous orange news van he arrived in. The broken satellite spire sticking out of the roof was an unsightly eyesore. 

“Want me to move the van?”

The last thing Neil wanted was to attract evil people to this strange sanctuary. 

“Don’t worry about it,” the former coach insisted, “this area is deserted.” 

It was no comfort. Hernandez led Neil to an upright wooden shed attached to the side of the house. The small shed stood next to a gate affixed with an unlocked padlock. Hernandez opened one of the two doors and removed a few tools and two pairs of rubber gloves. 

“Nicky told me you were pretty handy out there,” Hernandez said, holding out a shovel and a trowel, “choose your weapon.”

It was a poor joke and Hernandez knew it. He frowned in apology. 

“Nicky talks a lot,” Neil sighed as he took the shovel, “not everything he says is true.” Even if Neil gave Nicky the benefit of the doubt on most things, the mystery boyfriend waiting for him on the other side of the Atlantic was a stretch.

Hernandez shrugged enigmatically. Neil followed him to the garden. 

The small plot of turned earth was situated right up against the back of the house. The garden grew produce, a batch of raspberries, blueberries, and cherry tomatoes, nearly ripe. A perpendicular bed grew cucumbers, rutabaga, and papaya. The weeds that sprouted tall between the plants had the garden beds overflowing. 

The shovel served as a second crutch as much as a gardening implement. Hernandez directed Neil on the proper way to dig up roots so they wouldn’t grow back. Neil pointed out some strands of wild onion good to eat. Hernandez got on his knees with the trowel. It would’ve been easier for Neil to sit but he wasn’t about to give Hernandez the high ground on him, even if he seemed like a nice enough guy. 

A fast hour went by before Hernandez spoke again. 

“Nicky said you saved them out there,” Hernandez huffed as he broke the silence, “he said if you weren’t there to help them out, they might not have gotten back.” 

Neil didn’t say anything.

“It was their first time out after the camps,” Hernandez admitted. “I was worried about them.”

Somehow, Neil is not surprised. They definitely would have died without him. 

“We didn’t want to send them out in the first place,” Hernandez took off a glove and ran a hand through his hair, “you’re just boys - kids, all of you - but we need supplies if we want to stay here in the long term.” 

Hernandez seemed guilty for speaking the hard truth.

“They didn’t manage to get much,” Neil said, trying to lighten the mood. He remembered all of the possible food drops they passed by on their way to Flagstaff. He figured it wasn’t worth mentioning.

“They came back alive,” Henandez said, “that’s the important part.” 

Neil and Hernandez managed to laugh about it. 

The berries were ripe and Neil ate a handful. 

They were delicious.

* * *

The days went on like that for longer than Neil expected. 

Long enough for Neil to watch Maureen use the generator to vacuum the floor. Neil understood powering the coffeemaker and the stove but the vacuum was a little excessive. One night, Maureen was “spring cleaning, sweetie,” which apparently meant running the vacuum, washing machine, and dishwasher simultaneously. The generators that managed to survive generators Marlene’s cleaning rampage were short-circuited by Kevin’s clumsy attempt to help Maureen clean. Kevin definitely didn’t want to clean, but he wanted to sit and stare at the wall even less. He was budged to one Exy rerun a week on the Hernandez television and he already used up that day’s ration. After he blew the second, Kevin was banished to the couch and instructed not to touch anything electronic for the foreseeable future. Even doing nothing, Kevin’s guilt-ridden stress managed to blow out the lightbulbs in the room he was sitting in.

Kevin’s incompetence was nothing new but Neil was dumbfounded by Maureen’s wastefulness. 

“It helps with a sense of normalcy,” Maureen told Neil when she saw his confused expression. She patted a miserable and contrite Kevin on the back while she spoke to Neil.

“Normalcy?”

Neil never heard the word. 

“Yeah hun, didn’t your mama ever vacuum when you were a kid?”

The idea of his mother picking up a vacuum was absurd. She was a Hartford daughter and the missing matriarch of the Wesninski family. Neil didn’t remember ever seeing his mother in the kitchen, either. Mob wives had leaning ladies and chefs. Neil shook his head. 

Maureen was stricken and clutched her chest, looking at him with such acute sympathy it almost bordered on pity, “you poor thing.”

After that, Neil helped Hernandez out around the house wherever he could in a bid to avoid Maureen. He helped Hernandez with the garden. He helped fix the generator, mostly by handing Hernandez the necessary tools. He tidied the bathroom more than once. 

Mostly, Neil cleaned up after Aaron. 

According to Katelyn, the house was built based on Maureen’s own schematics. She was a dual architect and interior designer. Maureen was working on the house for a client when IAAN struck and the client lost both her children and disappeared off the map before the house could be completed in entirety. To the Hernandez family, the partially unfinished house seemed like the perfect place to hide from tracers. It worked out for them so far. 

As it turned out, the unfinished basement was only unfinished insofar as the missing drywall and the requisite furnishings for what would have been an in-law apartment under the original design. The bathroom was finished, complete with eclectic floor-to-ceiling tile and a gigantic countertop with three independent sinks. 

Aaron filled one of the sinks with vomit to the point of clogging the drain. Neil used a pipe wrench for the first time. He was able to clean Aaron’s sick out of the tubes, but reconstructing the sink was beyond Neil’s skillset. He wasn’t too concerned, as Aaron had two more sinks left to ruin. 

Neil tried to get Katelyn to lock Aaron in the basement bathroom with some water and canned goods for everyone’s safety, but Katelyn said that kind of treatment was inhumane. Neil was against interrupting Aaron’s detox - for his own safety. Aaron was in his right mind when he shot Neil in cold blood. Neil had no doubt that if Aaron saw Neil in his current state, Aaron might try to kill him - again. 

Neil already witnessed Aaron screaming at Katelyn’s loud enough to burst blood vessels in his face. He went on a Blue rampage, cracked the vanity mirrors and shattered the glass shower stall with nothing but the whiplash of his rage. Neil was forced to knock him out with a punch to the face just to sweep up the glass before Aaron could roll around in it and cut himself to ribbons. 

Neil left Katelyn to make Aaron’s excuses over dinner. Katelyn decided to tell her parent’s that Aaron had a particularly severe head cold. Maureen immediately jumped into action to make Aaron a bowl of chicken soup with all the trappings. Katelyn backpedaled quickly, nearly tripped over herself, when Maureen insisted on bringing the soup to Aaron personally. Despite Katelyn’s insistence that she could handle the tray, Maureen was not budging. 

Maureen was going to find a half-dead Aaron deep in the throes of withdrawal and that would not be good for Neil, Kevin, or Nicky. 

Neil threw himself on the sword. 

“Maureen, did I ever tell you that my mom was English?”

Maureen was “beyond excited,” by Neil’s volunteered information and barely noticed when Katelyn carefully relieved her of the tray and disappeared from the kitchen. Neil spent the rest of the meal fielding Maureen’s increasingly intrusive follow-up questions. Neil was forced to invent and embellish touching stories to keep Maureen invested and make her forget Aaron entirely. 

Maureen made multiple bowls and Neil was forced to offer a new story in trade. 

Fortunately, Neil was a great liar.

He always went down to the basement after dinner to check and make sure Aaron and Katelyn were still alive. 

One night, Neil found the tray crumpled like a piece of paper and the bowl shattered to smithereens when Neil was finally able to extricate himself and get downstairs. He found the metal serving tray crumpled up like a balled-up piece of paper. The bowl was shattered to smithereens and Katelyn was covered in broth. A piece of chicken was stuck in her hair. Neil laboriously eased himself down next to Katelyn and sat with her while she cried, to keep her quiet and make sure no one walked in on the disaster that was Aaron detoxing. Katelyn fell asleep with her head on Neil’s shoulder. 

Neil didn’t plan to spend a month in Flagstaff and he definitely didn’t expect to enjoy it.

He carefully took out his stitches that night.

* * *

There was something serene about working in a garden. 

Neil and Hernandez finished weeding and it was time to harvest. Maureen gave Neil a beaming smile and a stack of sauce bowls to fill with the fresh-picked vegetables. The fruit would need another week or two to mature, Hernandez told Neil. 

Neil took the trowel that day, lowering himself carefully onto his good side by a particularly fruitful cucumber vine. It was the first day Neil was able to walk without a crutch and not feel like his leg was going to fall off. Sitting in the dirt, filling a huge mixing bowl metal cooking pot with cucumber, Neil was not in pain. 

Neil filled his bowls and still had more cucumber plants to harvest. He went back inside and Maureen had a stack metal cooking pots ready with a smile and a pat on the cheek Neil tried not to flinch away from. Maureen went back to working the blender. Neil closed the kitchen slider behind him for the noise. Hernandez said the area was abandoned but Neil was taking as few chances as possible. 

Hernandez was picking the rutabagas on the other side of the garden when Neil returned to the cucumbers. Hernandez smiled at Neil over the plants. They spend the better part of the morning harvesting the other halves of the garden. They met at the papayas and filled the last few bowls side by side. The bowls and pots were heavily ladened down. It was going to take multiple trips to get all the vegetables inside. 

Neil was hoisting the first bowl of cucumbers into his arms when he heard it - the sound of a heavy boot stepping on a crisp, thick branch. 

Neil used his peripheral vision to scope the treeline. He turned his head slightly to increase in his sightline. 

He saw nothing. 

Neil froze, trying to move as little as possible. If someone was lurking in the trees, Neil needed them to believe he was ignorant until I came time to bolt. 

“Hernandez --

“Don’t move, or I’ll kill you,” said the voice that pressed a cool gun barrel against the back of Neil’s head. The sensation provoked goosebumps all over his body.

But - the _voice_

 _“This is my stash boy, I’ll rip you in half.”_

Holy shit. 

The guy from the pharmacy. Neil didn’t actually kill him. 

The gun to Neil’s head kept him from being relieved. 

Hernandez turned and raised his shovel in defense. He took a few steps forward until he noticed the gun to Neil’s head. He stopped dead in his tracks and his face went chalk white. 

“Finally found you,” Neil heard a rasp, “but not the one I’m looking for.” 

“Good. I can’t give you what you want if I’m dead,” Neil licked his dry lips and held very, very still. 

“I recognized the blonde him from the site, you see,” the guy said, continuing as though Neil hasn’t spoken. He was probably high. Neil smelled a rotten stink wafting off the guy’s skin: infection. Neil heard lip a wet cough, “Aaron Minyard, Blue out of Fort Worth, 10,000 big ones.”

The man moved the gun a few inches from Neil head, far enough away for Neil to slowly glance back to get an eyeful of his pimpled chubby face and long greasy pointail glory. His face was pale but his hand was steady. His shirt was stained with pus and blood, a livid red stained the flank, marking where Neil winged him. Over the sick man’s shoulder, Hernandez stood tight-lipped, his expression closed off. 

“Where’s Aaron?” 

“I don’t know any Aaron,” Neil said reflexively, “put down the gun, please.”

He pressed it harder against the side of Neil’s head. 

“Don’t fucking lie to me - I _saw_ you with him. You had a gimp leg back then. I would have got him if you minded your own business.”

Neil said nothing and hoped it would save him. He had no defense anyway. There was no lie in those words. Neil really needed to learn how to mind his own business.

“I didn’t recognize _you_. I’ve been all over that site and I’ve never seen your ginger face. How come?” 

The guy from the pharmacy fumbled with his belt, muttering under his breath. Eventually, he produced a device a little larger than a cellphone. It had the Tracernet logo imprinted on the back of it. It was a circular screen with to have a camera on the front and a metal handle built into the side. Neil knew what it was. He saw them at the camps, while Mom whispered in his ear about how he needed to know what to look for.

It was a Color scanner, wielded by every enforcement agent when the consequences of IAAN started to manifest and kids were getting rounded up, segregated by Color, and sent to labor camps. The tracers carried them because the bounty on an escaped kid depended on the Color. Blues more expensive than Greens, Yellows more expensive than Blue’s. 

As if sensing Neil was about to bolt, the man stepped in front of Neil. He pressed the gun into Neil’s forehead hard enough to force him to his knees. 

The scanner went right next to the gun. 

“Stop moving!” He was getting angry. 

The tracer waved the scanner in front of Neil’s face. 

Neil held his breath, dread suffusing his very being.

The viewscreen lit up a neon-bright shade of orange. 

Warning stripes bloomed to bracket the screen and a single word emerged 

/ / /-- TERMINATE -- / / / 

Typed in bold black lettering over the traffic cone orange. An audible alarm sounded from the device, a frantic beeping that got louder the longer it went unattended. 

“Holy shit,” the tracer gasped, the righteous fury on his face melting away to a slack jaw and wide eyes. 

Hernandez appeared out of nowhere and hit him in the back with the shovel. 

The man dropped the gun and the machine.

Hernandez dove for the gun and snatched it up in his hands. He held it like an amateur but that didn’t matter to the person held a gunpoint. Hernandez kept the tracer at bay while Neil destroyed the machine by beating it with a shovel until the alarm stopped. 

Neil took a breath and prepared to clean up his mess. 

Hernandez was a good person. 

Neil couldn’t let him kill someone. And let’s face it, Neil already killed the guy once. 

He could do it again. 

Neil stepped forward, with purpose. 

Hernandez shook his head, gesturing repeated towards the house. He kept looking from Neil to the sensor - from the sensor to Neil. 

Neil went to the tracer.

“Don’t do this,” the tracer begged, “please don’t.”

Hernandez didn’t know what Neil was doing but he backed Neil up, keeping the gun up and threatening so the tracer was afraid run. 

“Oh, god.”

“No such thing.”

Neil touched a single finger to the tracer’s forehead and slipped into his mind. 

The slight point of contact was all Neil needed to take hold of Richard Pierce’s consciousness. Neil saw the man’s memories as a series of glass screens, one after the other, stretching into a black infinity. Neil didn’t bother to look. He pushed through the glass, breaking or shattering the memories indiscriminately in order to get to the mind beyond. To the place where Richard became Dick became Little Dicky. Soon, Neil was more of Richard’s mind than Richard was. Neil knew what Richard knew. He knew what Richard had just done and what he planned to do next, to Aaron, Neil, Katelyn, and Maureen.

In the scattered fragments of Richard’s memories, Neil saw small bodies laying in the rain, their green jumpsuits stained blood red. 

Neil knew what Richard did to the kids before he claimed their bounty. What he did with the kids that couldn’t fetch sufficient cash for his tastes.

Neil decided what Richard deserved. 

Neil was going to kill a man that deserved to die. 

Neil did not look away from Richard. His focus needed to be absolute to remain in control. To keep from turning Richard to soup - or insane, like Mom. Neil shattered the last memory left, the very first, and withdrew his influence from Ricard Pierce’s mind slowly, carefully. He left the man a shell, stripped of himself and waiting for Neil to tell him what to do. It was a trick of the mind Neil never tried before and it worked. It felt natural. 

Neil knew he was in control when Richard’s hands went limp and arms fell to his sides.

“Richard, are you listening?” 

“Yes.”

“Good,” Neil said, “Richard, I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“Richard,” Neil murmured gently, “lay down.”

The ground would muffle the sound of the gunshot and hide the evidence. 

Richard obeyed. 

“Put the gun in your mouth.”

Behind him, Neil heard Hernandez shuffle his feet and move closer, preceding interruption. In a moment, Neil would hear an impassioned speech of equality and goodwill toward all mankind and a trial by a jury of his peers. 

Neil looked over his shoulder and rested his bright Orange gaze on Hernandez. The man visibly recoiled and then collected himself with an air of embarrassment. Neil saw the sweat break out on his forehead and under his armpits. Hernandez did not shrink away, but he did rest his weight back on his heels. Tacitly agreed not to interfere. 

Neil returned his attention to Richard. His arm was still by his side. Neil will have to be most specific with his directions. 

“Do it now,” Neil told him. 

Richard put his Glock handgun in his mouth. 

Neil watched Richard’s eyes for a long moment, looking for anything real in his blank, glazed stare. Any kind of resistance to Neil’s influence - a spark of his humanity coming through, the will to survive overriding the power of Neil’s mind. 

He saw nothing. 

“Pull the trigger.”

Richard killed himself. His blood spilled on the ground, probably seeping into the garden soil and turning it fallow. A small river of blood poured from Richard’s head would. Neil watched chunks brain matter drift down the stream like little boats to blood to collect at the base of a cucumber plant.

The Hernandez property was about an acre. Neil could spend the entire afternoon digging a grave, or he could dump the guy in the swamp. 

Neil picked up Richard’s ankles and began to drag him away from the property, as far as the trees allowed. Neil retrieved the shovel he used for planting and began to dig a grave for the man he killed in self-defense. Neil figured four feet was as good as six without any law enforcement to care about a missing man and circumstantial evidence.

Neil was surprised when Hernandez came up behind him with the trowel. For a moment, Neil thought Hernandez would brain him with a rock and leave them both in the same grave. 

Hernandez broke ground and directed Neil how to dig without severing any tree roots. 

Hernandez joined Neil, and together, they dug a grave. Neither spoke a word to each other. The worked with shared purpose but did not acknowledge each other or the corpse lying beside them. They worked for hours. 

Neil was certain that Hernandez would tell him to leave when they were finished. He killed a man on Hernandez property, right in front of his face - with nothing but his mind. 

Hernandez should be afraid.

Neil was a monster. 

Neil was ready to leave today. If he could dig a grave with his leg, he could run. He just needed grab his bag and slip out. Hernandez seemed the kind to let Neil leave with what he brought, unmolested. The only way Neil could justify hiding his bag in the guest room. 

When the grave was finished, Neil threw the Glock in with the body. The grave was reburied and left unmarked. Neil and Walter returned the shovel and trowel to the shed, as they had the days previously. They stood outside the shed for a while, staring at the full baskets of veggies still sitting on the back porch. It was a miracle that they weren’t interrupted. 

It was Neil that broke the silence. 

“Give me ten minutes to get my bag and my gun, and I’m gone.”

“I understand if you need to leave, but I’m not kicking you out, son.”

Neil recoiled from the sentiment as Hernandez should have from the idea of Neil’s continued presence. Neil stepped away from Hernandez, putting more than an arms-length between himself the man that was just asking to die an untimely death. 

“Self-defense is a necessary evil,” Hernandez told Neil, “if you let a man like that go you’d only be endangering the folks he’d meet down the line.” 

Neil knew it wasn’t true but he wanted to believe it. Hernandez was trying to make him feel better but it was a useless endeavor. Neil saw in Hernandez’s face - he wouldn’t have killed Richard.

“I didn’t have to kill him,” Neil said. And he was right. Neil has a sense for his potential now more than he had after Mom. His consciousness in Richard’s mind - like water spilling over fabric, nothing to do but absorb the damage. If Neil could accidentally kill Mom and kill Richard on purpose, he could do anything to someone else’s mind. 

With nothing but a touch. 

“I could have stopped him without killing him.” 

Neil remembered the reflective surfaces rippling with memories in motion. He didn’t have to break them. 

Neil waited for this information to sink in with Hernandez. He watched the former Exy coach as he always did, looking for hints of what Hernandez was actually thinking. Neil could read most faces like he read minds and Hernandez was a blank slate in this. Suddenly, Neil missed the Congenial warmth that once grated on his nerves. The way Hernandez was willing to embrace anyone that entered into his orbit. 

“I’ll admit,” Hernandez eventually scoffed and rubbed the back of his neck, “I’ve never seen Orange eyes before,” he looked at Neil with cautious concern, not fearful pity. He was gravely curious instead of repulsed. Only because he was unaware of Neil’s true potential. Richard barely scratched the surface. 

“My Katelyn can think faster than the calculator, but that was something different,” Hernandez seemed to confirm for himself rather than ask, “wasn’t it, Neil?”

Neil spent all of his time preparing for potential moment like this, and he froze. 

Then he deflected. 

“How well do you know Aaron?” 

Neil turned the conversation around out of desperation. He would out Aaron’s habit in order to distract Hernandez from looking any further down Neil’s rabbit hole.

“Well enough to know he’s detoxing in my basement,” Walter laughed weakly, “what would have been my man-cave if Lowes would ever restock the 4x4s.”

Neil waited for some indication that Hernandez was kidding. Giving him more needle platitudes, Neil was not confident enough to think Aaron’s moaning and shouting and dry-heaving went unnoticed, but people tended not to ask intrusive questions. It was not polite. Up until this point, the Hernandez family has extended every hospitality. Neil assumed Hernandez knew about Aaron’s habit and chose not to say anything about it. Maureen seemed a little caught up in entertaining Nicky to notice Aaron’s conspicuous absence. It was worth a shot. 

“I know that you’re helping him,” Hernandez concluded softly, looking at Neil like he look at a child through the eyes of a parent, “even though you hate him something fierce.” 

Hernandez closes the tool shed doors and started back for the house.

“Thanks for oiling the hinges, by the way,” Hernandez threw the comment over shoulder with a wave. “That door gives me a hell of a time.”

After they finished bringing in the rest of the vegetables, Neil moved the van further into the neighborhood and parked it behind a ticket of vine-covered trees.

* * *

Dinner was silent that evening. Neil knew as soon as he sat at the table that Hernandez said nothing. Maureen and Katelyn chatted and laughed like they hadn’t a care in the world. Neil glanced at Hernandez to find the man watching him. Hernandez winked congeniality like Neil hadn’t just killed a man and Hernandez hadn’t helped him bury the man’s corpse in the backyard. Neil looked away. He forced himself to clean his plate, appetite nonexistent. 

Eventually, the kitchen emptied until Neil and Hernandez were the last two left. Hernandez was sitting between Neil and the door, and Neil would have to step into his reach to get past him, effectively trapping Neil in the kitchen. He would rather wait for Hernandez to leave. 

“Was it your father, or someone else? Coach, maybe?”

Neil’s head snapped to Hernandez and he got caught in a knowing stare. An expression that asked for the suffering that burdened Neil so that Hernandez could bear the weight. Neil saw how this man’s daughter could tolerate Aaron. 

“What are you talking about?”

Neil was not going to tell Walter about his past. 

“The person that hurt you. I know fear when I see it, Neil.”

Neil neither confirmed or denied. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down nonchalantly, keeping Walter at the edges of his vision. The man watched him for a long moment before he started talking. 

“When Katelyn was about ten years old, she had a birthday party and invited all the kids in her class to our house in Millport. To my enduring surprise and dismay, every dang kid showed up. It was a madhouse. The kids got into everything, it was absolute chaos. I thought my house would never be the same,” Hernandez digressed, rubbing his bearded chin and staring into space like he was looking through time to a decade in the past. 

“About an hour into the party, one of the boys wouldn’t come out of the bathroom. Maureen was busy wrangling the kids and most of the other parents were day drinking so it was up to me to see what was what,” Hernandez cringed and rubbed the back of his neck. 

“I knocked on the door and asked him to open up and what was wrong. He didn’t answer me but he opened the door right away. The kid took one look at me and pissed his pants. He was frozen on the spot like a deer in the crosshairs. He didn’t even notice he just peed all over my new hardwood floor!” Hernandez wiped his face and Neil knew the concern he saw there was not for the floors. 

“I’ve never seen a kid look so scared,” Hernandez said “or be so quiet about it. Like he knew being afraid of me was just as bad as what he was actually afraid of. Turns out that the boy’s father was beating him something awful. The state took him out of his father’s home, two years later.” 

Neil cracked left, right, and center. 

Richard was not the first time since mom that Neil touched someone’s mind. It was always an accident and Neil always handled it the same way: He took every memory they had of him, like they Neil saw Neil because he was never there. He planned to do the same to Nicky and Kevin and Aaron. Was going to do the same to the Hernandez family. 

If was going to take their memories of his existence with him when he left. There wasn't much harm in Hernandez knowing the truth when Neil could to strip it right out of his head. 

“How bout I take a look at that leg?”

Hernandez led Neil to the master bathroom. Neil looked for Maureen and didn't see her. 

“She’s checking the locks. I go around and lock up every night but she always does a second pass. Thinks I’m going to get lazy and forget one of them,” Hernadez said and Neil followed him into the master bedroom and took a look around. The corners were filled with bookshelves half-covered in knickknacks. 

They walked right past the closet door Neil pried open without a word. Hernandez led Neil to the bathroom. It had a jacuzzi tub, two skins, and a push-button toilet. 

Hernadez directed Neil to sit on the toilet and remove his pants. Neil fought through the intense deja ju, let his pants fall to the floor, and slowly lowered himself onto the seat top. 

“Through and through,” Hernandez whistled, “you’re one lucky kid.” 

Neil declined to comment on the matter. Hernadez refrained from asking Neil who sewed him up and Neil was grateful for the reprieve. He checked both wounds to see if the reopened. The wound did not start bleeding again under Hernadez’s prodding. Neil critically eyed the jagged red wound for signs of infection. The swelling seemed characteristic for an aggravated bullet wound, his skin was not discolored, and the pain was not severe when Hernandez was finished with the entry and exit wounds. 

“My Marlene will wash your pants for you,” Hernandez offered, gesturing to Neil’s improvised jorts, “she’s a whizz at getting out bloodstains.” 

Hernandez picked up on Neil’s incredulousness.

“Cheerleading is a cut-throat sport,” he said, and nothing else. He went about disposing of the gauze and wiping down the sink. He turned his back on Neil and went to put the first aid kit back in the small linen closet by the door. 

“My father,” Neil wheezed, “he’ll kill me if he finds me, and he’s getting closer.” 

Neil spoke his closest secret to a man he just met and somehow felt lighter - like he could run faster if he needed to. Hernandez turned around to face Neil slowly, telegraphing his movements for Neil’s benefit. He walked carefully to the counter so Neil could finally escape. He was half out the door when Hernandez replied. 

“We better make sure he never finds you, then,” Hernandez said, brushing off Neil’s statement like it was an observation about the weather. Neil turned and looked for any clues in Hernandez’s voice or body language. Hernandez poured himself a cup of coffee, his back to Neil. 

“But remember Neil, even if he does find you, you might just live. You are stronger than you think, Neil, and your father is weaker than he believes. Eventually, the wicked get what they deserve,” Hernandez took a sip from the coffee mug, and savored it, “if not the extent that they should, sometimes.” 

The words were like marbles, rolling around in Neil’s heading, bouncing off everything he knew and ending up somewhere else entirely. A space unknown to Neil. Things he never thought before. Uncharted space in a confined reality. Neil’s head was spinning. He fled the bathroom. 

It was time to take another shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter! Double thank you to those who have commented on every chapter so far -- you have my everlasting gratitude. Getting feedback from you guys is honestly my favorite part of writing fic. I always post at night so I can look forward to opening my email in the morning. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
> 
> As for author's notes, I consider this chapter an interim period. I edit it a few extra times to make sure it flowed smoothly for you guys. The climax of the first arc comes next and will feature all of the Monster's perspectives. I'm excited it and I hope you are too! 
> 
> I spent a lot of this chapter focusing on Neil's intricacies as a person. He is a character full of interesting contradictions. I wanted to portray his conflicted and somewhat jaded way of thinking in foil with his compassionate behavior. I tried to articulate that particularly with the death of Dick Pierce. Neil had the option of dumping him in the swamp but chose to bury him because of deep-seated respect for human life. The fact that he helped Aaron detox and became friendly with Hernandez are other examples. 
> 
> I am especially happy to be posting this chapter today because it has become a particularly special day. My little cousin was adopted and just this afternoon reached out to my Aunt to open communication and I might actually get to see her this Christmas. This is the best news, my heart is pounding out of my chest! 
> 
> I hope you all have a wonderful day! 
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Shtare


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil undergoes a frustrating transition. 
> 
> Enjoy

Neil was getting restless. He stayed with the Hernandez family for too long. It got to the point where he was volunteering himself for supply runs, willing to risk being seen just to move and feel a little less like he was trapped in a foxhole. 

Kevin was equally as eager to get out and dogged in tell Neil about it. He wasn’t allowed to go on runs, use the treadmill, or take the car. He complained endlessly about his deteriorating muscle mass. He didn’t understand why Neil was not more concerned about the state of his cardiac health. Neil wondered why Kevin was not more concerned about being caught and traded for overinflated money - and how to avoid getting shot in the head in the process. Neil was going to shoot Kevin himself sooner or later. Sooner, if Kevin did not stop harassing Neil about his fitness. Kevin hovered around Neil like a horsefly, invading his personal space and stepping on his heels at every opportunity. He was driving Neil crazy. 

The rest of Kevin’s time was spent whispering furiously to Nicky or yelling at Aaron, gesticulating wildly all the while. Kevin’s frustration was almost enough to bowl Aaron over. He was still weak and barely fit to return to civil society. Aaron may have looked half dead but he had a noticeably renewed focus with a singular direction Neil now knew to be -- Andrew. 

Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron returned to the clandestine conversations they’d stopped since arriving at the Hernandez house. They were holding private conference more and more often as the days stretched with nothing to do and plenty of energy to go around. Kevin burned out almost a house of lightbulbs with his restlessness. 

Reading Aaron’s letter made Neil realize that Kevin’s obsession with maps and all of their secretive conversations were about finding Andrew. Andrew swore in blood to find Aaron and presumably, he never showed up. By the look of it, Aaron was trying to find Andrew instead. 

Looking for Andrew was probably what they were doing when Nicky picked Neil up in the parking lot. Neil knew about devotion, Mom did everything possible to keep Neil safe - but they were never separated. Would mom have looked for him, if Neil disappeared, or would she have cut her losses and gone on alone to live a normal life somewhere? She would have been better off without Neil and Neil would not have begrudged her that chance. Neil didn’t give her that chance when he betrayed her love for him. 

That kind of devotion didn’t come easily. 

Andrew must be Aaron’s family. Nicky said Aaron was his cousin on his father’s side. Andrew could be another cousin. That didn’t explain Kevin. As far as Neil could tell, the three of them barely tolerated each other. Neil had broken up three fistfights between Kevin and Aaron in the span of a week. Neil helped Marlene clean up the shattered remains of the blender when Kevin had a panic attack and made the thing explode into pieces. He cleaned up the shards of glass when every lamp in the house exploded.

Neil was knee-deep with these people and he was hesitant to get more involved. 

Andrew had nothing to do with him. 

The universe had other ideas. 

Neil kept getting on the receiving end of private conversations he had no desire to hear. 

The real torture began with Kevin’s usual subtlety. Neil was taking one of his daily showers when Kevin barged into the bathroom. Somehow, in his infinite stupidity, Neil left the door unlocked. Kevin opened the glass door of the shower stall, careless of Neil’s nudity as he let a rush frigid air into the stall.

“What the — Kevin!”

“Do you think Riko is looking for me?”

Kevin’s green eyes were stricken and his lips were bitten raw. It was his usual worst-case scenario, equal parts Riko suffering in some camp and Riko hunting Kevin down with prejudice and reigning suffering down on him. 

“Can we talk about this later? I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Neil said, trying to cover his scars and privates simultaneously.

“Yeah, Kevin, Neil is clearly busy,” Nicky said over Kevin’s shoulder, his roving eyes taking in every inch of Neil’s frame. Neil knew he couldn’t hide everything. Maybe a good look at his scars would keep them from interrupting his showers in the future. 

“No, we can’t talk about this later,” Kevin said. 

“Damn Neil, what happened to you?” Nicky’s asked, voice tight. 

“Get the fuck out, both of you,” Neil said in lieu of answering. He brought up a leg and kicked Kevin in the chest, making enough room to close the shower door between them. The clear glass was little protection, but at least Neil was warm again. The former pro striker caught himself of the vanity and looked at Neil, stricken. Nicky stared at Neil with new and different eyes. The pity there was too much for Neil to take. “And shut the fucking door!”

Kevin obeyed, for once in his life, and herded a frozen Nicky out the door. Nicky tried to apologize later, but the apology turned out to be a thinly veiled attempt to pry information out of Neil about his sordid past. For a tactic, it wasn’t much. 

Neil’s life only got worse after that.

Nicky was unable to keep his mouth shut about Neil’s chest, and then there was nothing to stop Marlene from pushing a series of expired anti-scarring creams on Neil. Neil had no intention of using them, but he took the jars to keep her happy and quieter. Aaron made more than one derogatory comment about Neil’s history of domestic violence and all the women that must have fought back. Kevin studiously ignored Neil’s scars, trying to seem unaffected despite the sidelong glances he kept throwing Neil. 

Kevin asked Neil about Riko nearly every day and no matter what Neil told him, Kevin only got more anxious. The stress struck Kevin intensely at random intervals, always at the most inconvenient moments for Neil. It seemed like every time Neil was in the bathroom, Kevin was pounding on the door. Neil was getting shaken awake to find Kevin’s panicked face looming over him in the middle of the night. Kevin asked intrusive questions about his father’s business and grew increasingly unsatisfied with Neil’s vague answers. Neil couldn’t take much more. 

Avoiding Kevin meant running into Aaron, as the two avoided each other like the plague. Neil tried to avoid Aaron and that drove him right into Kevin’s path. It was a vicious cycle that needed to end before Neil lost his mind. 

One morning was peaceful, for the most part. Neil managed to wake up naturally and hadn’t seen a soul over the course of his shower and breakfast. Neil was walking out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee, reveling in the silence when he heard it. The sound of footsteps on the carpet, two pairs. Aaron’s pissy voice washed over Neil like the puddle-water wake kicked up by the tires of a speeding car. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Aaron without his usual viciousness. 

“The next time you go out, I’m coming with you. This is not a discussion,” said Katelyn, from out of sight. 

“No, Katelyn, it’s better for you to stay at the house, where it’s safe, your parents, -

“Aaron,” Katelyn interrupted, “you were two days late! I thought - I thought you weren’t coming back,” Katelyn's voice cracked, “I thought you died on me. I’m not going through that again.”

“Katelyn --

“I know you’re going out for Andrew next time. Who knows how long you’ll be gone? I can’t take it Aaron. I can’t sit here and do nothing while my peers drop dead all around me. End of conversation. I’m going.”

“Ok, Katelyn. Ok.” 

The only thing Neil heard after that was zippers and he hightailed it to the backyard, unable to be in the same house as Aaron and Katelyn having sex. 

Kevin was already outside. Neil did an abrupt about-face but didn’t make it back to the slider in time.

“Neil?”

Neil paused and turned at length. Kevin wasn’t looking at Neil. Kevin was staring into the trees straight ahead - at the tree that marked the first grave, Neil ever dug. 

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Kevin was standing next to the spot where Neil killed a person for the first time. 

“No,” Neil said, “have you?” 

“No.”

They stood in uncomfortable silence for a while, until they were called in for dinner.

About a week later, Kevin was waiting up for Neil in the bedroom after dinner. Neil and Hernandez usually stayed up an hour or two longer than everyone else, sharing the dregs of the coffeemaker and talking about Millport’s abysmal Exy team. It had quickly become the best part of Neil’s day. Better than showers, maybe. Finding Kevin perched on the edge of his bed took Neil’s exhaustion to new levels. Neil quickly changed into sweats he used as pajamas. Neil didn’t bother changing in the bathroom anymore. Kevin had already seen Neil’s scars and was the only one that kept his mouth shut about them, other than Hernandez. If Kevin looked like he was going to be sick whenever Neil took his shirt off, that was Kevin’s problem. 

“We need to talk,” Kevin said, gravely. 

“No, we don’t,” Neil replied flippantly. Whatever Kevin wanted to talk about was likely to be fatalistic and unpleasant. Whatever fresh hell Kevin concocted could wait until tomorrow. 

“Riko was looking for you before everything fell apart,” Kevin said, hands cupped around his mouth as he leaned over, “he knew you would be the right age and he wanted to get as many years from you as possible.” 

Kevin’s new information was like a bucket of ice water emptied over Neil’s head. The last thing Neil needed was another person with resources was out for Neil’s blood. Neil expected Riko to wait in line behind the Butcher. 

“Your point?” Neil wanted to go to sleep. 

“He’s looking for both of us,” Kevin said. 

“How do you know he’s even alive?” Neil asked, voice laced with sarcasm. Riko was probably dead. The news networks have been down for a while. 

“He’s alive and he’s going to kill us when he finds us.”

“Great,” Neil said, “something to look forward to.” 

Neil got into bed and rolled over, turning his back to Kevin. He kicked Kevin’s hip until the former striker got up and went to his own bed. Neil didn’t bother trying to turn out the lights. Kevin’s constant tension kept the circuits pretty active at all hours of the day and night. Too bad he had zero control, or they wouldn’t need the generators. Neil donned the polka dotted sleep-mask Maureen gave him the day he arrived.

“Do you think Riko is working with the Butcher?” Kevin’s voice shook. 

“No I don’t,” Neil said immediately, his skin crawling from the unexpected question and the idea it spawned, “my father has no reason to work with a random kid.” 

“He works with Kengo,” Kevin said like he was handing down a sentence. 

“Moriyama?” 

“Do you know another Kengo?”

Kevin’s attitude was entirely unnecessary and Neil was two seconds from completely freaking out. He is not prepared to hide from two mob families. No way. They’d find him in a minute. 

“Kevin, what are you trying to say?”

“The Butcher is an enforcer for the Moriyama - why did you think you were brought to Evermore for tryouts in the first place?”

Neil didn’t think about it that hard, to be honest. He was just glad to finally have friends and be able to play Exy. Mom told him once the Feds ceased to be a problem. The mob was a good explanation for the money, violence, and lack of a daytime job. Mom never mentioned that Neil’s father was working with the Moriyama and Neil knew better than to think she didn’t know. Neil was missing something. 

“The Moriyama are mob?”

“Neil, they’re yakuza,” Kevin said.

In the span of a moment, Neil’s life went from bad to worse. By the time Mom and Neil left, Nathan’s territory stretched from Maine to Maryland, his trade routes centered around Baltimore’s harbors. The Raven's were housed in Virginia. Presuming that Evermore marked a territorial boundary, at least half the east coast was under the authority of the mafia. The only hope Neil had of escaping his father was the man’s limited interest and dwindling resources after the collapse of the economy. His business would fail without imports. But if Nathan was being backed by an international criminal empire --

They were both going to die. 

“We need to leave,” Kevin said.

“Yeah, I know,” Neil said.

* * *

They had been meaning to go out on a supply run for a while, but things got more urgent after Katelyn got a notification on her laptop. She jerry-rigged the machine to connect to Tracernet as well as the government’s broadcasting network. Kaitlyn said it was mostly propaganda and _Seinfeld_ reruns. It was also connected to a cell phone belonging to old work friends of Aaron and Nicky. Apparently, they had new information about _Andrew._

It was decided that Neil, Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron would go out for a three-week run. Suffice to say, Katelyn didn’t join them. A focus on resources like sustainable food, non-perishables, seeds, light bulbs, oil, gas, and a replacement generator for the one Kevin blew. Hernandez had a functioning well and therefore freshwater. It was the primary reason they were refusing to leave the house despite Neil’s insistence that it was dangerous to stay in one place for too long. Eventually, someone would find them if they didn’t keep moving. Hernandez said that a man’s home was his sanctuary, and he would fight to protect it. 

Neil was more than ready to leave, equally interested in the obvious and subtextual reasons for their excursion. They never spoke his name out loud, so suffice to say Hernandez didn’t know about Andrew and believed the trip to be nothing more than a supply run. Whatever they got off Katelyn’s laptop was about Andrew. Neil suspected this trip would be less about finding supplied and more about finding Andrew. 

These days, finding Andrew meant watching the three of them bicker from five yards away. While they did that, Neil made himself useful. Neil went out for supplies alone by design. Aaron was useless, Nicky was loud, and Kevin was annoying. Neil was better off, even with the less hands. Somehow, it was less conspicuous for Neil to take multiple trips. 

The problem was there were a ton of people lingering around densely populated areas. Angry, bitter former-parents that collected in ramshackle bars and old pubs to commiserate their miserable lives over a bad batch of moonshine. If they were lucky, it would be some bottom-shelf vodka, which had grown frightening scarce in the post-apocalyptic childless world. Neil directed the group towards smaller scores like old convenience stores and abandoned restaurants. Neil didn’t always find something, but it was better than being caught out among the general populace. Neil’s idea proved its worth with a huge score of freeze-dried mac and cheese packets that filled three bags. It usually took Neil less than ten minutes to fill a duffle. 

One afternoon, when Neil returned to the van from a supply run, Nicky acted like Neil had performed some miracle when he produced a chocolate bar from the bag. Neil remembered Nicky mentioning candy when speaking to Neil, at some point. Somehow, Nicky’s joy was enough to lighten the mood - for a minute.

* * *

Neil heard the name, _Andrew,_ spoken for the first time during a furious argument between Aaron and Nicky. They were fighting over whether to travel north or east. Kevin looked ready to intervene until Aaron almost bit his head off and set him slinking away like a kicked puppy. For all of Kevin’s bluster, he was remarkably weak-willed. Aaron didn’t seem to like him any more than he liked Neil. Nicky talked to him, but Nicky also talked to Neil, so that didn’t say much. Neil quickly realized that these people were not together because they were friends. They had a shared purpose and Neil had a feeling this _Andrew_ had something to do with it. 

Neil’s curiosity was answered, if not in the way he intended. 

The four of them slept side by side in the back of the van in those few moments when no one had enough energy to keep driving. They didn’t have the cash for a motel and Neil buried his binder under a split tree off the I-20 in California. There was enough room in the back of the van for the mouth of them to lay side by side, if uncomfortably. 

One night, Kevin rolled over in his sleep. The bare skin of his arm touched the strip of uncovered skin at Neil’s neck. 

At first, Neil thought he was dreaming. The vision had the same distorted edges and vague feeling of reality that dreams carried. The familiar throb at the back of his head and the sensation of falling told him that, if this was a dream, it was not Neil’s. All at once, Neil is pulled into another mind and opens his eyes in another place. A place he doesn’t recognize. 

_Snow fell in fat flakes that quickly covered the ground in a layer of white powder._

_He was boxed in by a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. A hundred acres of forest stretched out around them on every side. He had the sense of being cattle hemmed in for the slaughter._

_“You ready, Kevin?”_

_Neil looks down further than he ever has to see a short blonde with an utterly impassive expression._

_Overhead, an alarm began to blare accompanied by flashing red lights._

_“Andrew,” Neil said, relieved, in a voice not his own, “the alarm!”_

_“Fire alarm,” Andrew said, “the guards evacuate to the back of the camp.” He looked a little irritated at having to explain himself. The distantly familiar yet entirely different face scanned the crowd as kids of all ages flooded from the building and into the snow. They were all running - some were smiling, despite being barefoot. The escape of Caledonia. A coordinated uprising of imprisoned IAAN kids planned and executed by --_

_“Let's go, Kevin,” Andrew wrapped a powerful grip around Neil’s borrowed arm and tossed him into the snow._

_Andrew took off and Neil followed, his legs were cold but he felt no exertion._

_“Keep them off the fence!” He heard Andrew yell, but not to who. Three tall figures sprinted away from the pack, getting to the fence before the rest of the escapees could throw themselves onto the electrified metal. The stampeding kids were stopped a few feet from the gate by an invisible force. They bounced off and collected like water at the drain._

_Andrew and Kevin stormed the guardhouse by brute force. Andrew kicking down doors and flooring guards cold with one punch while Kevin fretted over his shoulder. Andrew took a gun and tossed one to Kevin. Neil watched his own hands handle it more clumsily than a child with a distinct sense of body dysphoria._

_The guards in the control booth didn’t cooperate, even after Andrew shot one of them out of their seat. They radiated the pure hatred of false superiority._

_“We won’t help you,” said the guard with the keys._

_“Plan B,” Andrew said. He seemed bored and strangely relaxed for the situation. Andrew shot the three guards in quick succession. He watched them die with an unmoved expression._

_Kevin electrified the dashboard, killing the electric current that charged the fence to lethality._

_“Are you ready?”_

_Kevin nodded. Andrew dragged Kevin back outside. They were quickly swallowed by the stampede of fleeing, terrified kids._

_Someone pushed Neil and he went down._

_People trampled him._

_Someone else grabbed a handful of Neil’s yellow uniform and haul him bodily to his feet._

_Neil stared into the face of his rescuer with Kevin’s eyes and saw gold._

_“Andrew,” Kevin said. Neil heard the words but he didn’t move his mouth._

_Andrew’s face didn’t move except for his eyes, which flirted over Kevin -- Neil -- as if looking for injury. “Can you do this?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Keep your head down, don’t get shot, and don’t be a hero.”_

_Andrew towed Kevin and pushed him, and Neil by extension, toward the dead fence, the other fleeing kids, before he turned back to the compound. Neil watched the three Blues use their combined might to tear open the gate of thick bars, reinforced against cars. The pieces of the gate fell and people ran into the night, disappearing into the forest._

_Andrew gave Kevin another shove toward the open exit._

_“You go on, I forgot something,” Andrew said to Kevin as turned and ran back towards the school, presumably to be a hero. “I’ll catch up.”_

_His broad shoulders were silhouetted in the guard tower lights. Apparently Neil wasn’t the only hopeless martyr in the world._

_“Andrew!” Kevin shouted with as much anxiety as Neil felt. Running into automatic gunfire was not a good idea._

_In the distance, something exploded in a plume of orange fire._

Neil woke from the dream and scrambled to the front seat of the van. He got out as quietly as possible and collapse at the tree line, dry heaving into the bushes. He could not begin to understand what he had seen. To process emotions that weren’t his own, emotions he had never felt before.

 _Safety._

_Trust._

_Hope._

Neil kept his cards close to the chest with the trio. Nicky and Aaron have taken to bickering in German, effectively icing Kevin and Neil out on the assumption that Neil could not understand. It was a stupid strategy considering _Andrew_ sounded the same in any language. They never mentioned anything specific. The only truth Neil knew was what he saw in Kevin’s dream. Kevin’s memory of the day he escaped from Caldonia. 

The day Andrew broke them out. 

_Fear_

_Deseration_

_Grief_

It wouldn’t take a genius to know they were looking for someone with the way they huddled over a ratty paper map of the continental US. The time they spent descending into petty arguments was on Andrew’s behalf. The search for Andrew was the only reason Kevin was sticking around the chaos twins, Nicky and Aaron. 

And as it turned out, Andrew and Aaron were identical twins. 

Kevin stuck around with people he didn’t like because seeing Andrew in Aaron’s face made Kevin feel safer. 

Neil couldn’t relate. His leg still ached from Aaron’s stray bullet. 

The next morning, the three of them were back around the map. 

Neil wasn’t one to ask intrusive questions. He didn’t like questions as a rule and for the large part, he didn’t care what the three of them were into - until they started talking about going east. 

It took all of Neil’s control not to react. 

East was as good as a death sentence for Neil. After everything Kevin told him about his father and the Moriyama - Baltimore to Virginia was mob territory before the police kept them in line. Without the cops, the whole eastern seaboard could be controlled by the man Neil feared most. Neil told himself that he stayed with them because his legs were healing and he knew better than to drive alone. Neil realized how unacceptably comfortable he had gotten in that van - at the Hernandez house. For once, he had a vested interest in what happened next. 

For the first time, he intervened in one of their heated three-way debates. Kevin insisted on south, Aaron demanded east, and Nicky sided with Aaron.

Neil’s next words were for his own protection more than Andrew’s wellbeing. 

“I guarantee that Andrew isn’t east.” Neil tossed the name out casually and it landed like a grenade with the pin pulled. 

Neil was aiming to get a reaction and he was not disappointed. 

Whatever else Andrew was, he was clearly very important to these people. Even after everything, he knew they wouldn’t tell him about Andrew voluntarily. He was their most closely guarded secret. Even Kevin wouldn’t spill. Neil would have to make them tell him about Andrew. Good news, the only one with an ounce of fight was Aaron and Neil could take him on a good day. After going through withdrawal for a month, Aaron was weak as a kitten.

Kevin was horrified, clutching his chest like he could keep his frantic heart inside. Nicky stared at Neil with a gaping mouth, his tongue twitching like he wanted to say something but he was choking on the words. Aaron stilled for a just few seconds before he launched himself at Neil. 

Neil was all too familiar with aggression and he has been watching Aaron closely these last few weeks. It was easy enough to duck under Aaron’s punch. He grabbed the midget’s wrist as he went by, careful to only touch his sleeve as he used Aaron’s own momentum to twist his arm behind his back. Aaron cried out and Neil used his leverage to frog-march Aaron across the van and squish him up against the side paneling. No one moved, and no one spoke. Unfortunately for them, silence was often louder than words.

Neil wondered what kind of person could inspire such loyalty. 

“Stop,” Nicky cried, “let him go!” 

Nicky was stressed out but also too afraid to raise a hand against Neil after the superstore incident. Nicky was a second from cracking and spilling all their secrets. Everything he knew about Andrew, enough to fill in the gaps in Kevin’s dream. Nicky just needed a little push in the right direction. 

Neil did not let Aaron go. Instead, Neil applied a little more force, and Aaron swore a blue streak. Nicky would crack before Neil had to break Aaron’s arm. 

“Andrew is Aaron’s brother - and my cousin. We’re family! He’s in a camp and we’re going to break him out.” 

Nicky really believed that they were going to save Andrew. They were looking for him because he was their family. Neil was a little impressed. Most people didn’t give a shit about their families before the apocalypse, not to mention after the world went to shit, the internet collapsed, and the phone companies foreclosed. 

Neil let Aaron go. He was expecting retaliation of some kind, but Aaron was too busy trying to eviscerate Nicky with a venomous look. 

Neil didn’t know how to tell them that their rescue mission was doomed. 

“Are you planning to pick him up off the side of the road?” Neil said. As far as he was concerned, miracles were in short supply. 

“We have it on good authority that he’s being held at Thurmond,” Nicky said, seemingly excited to get the secret out in the open. He was so full of hope it almost hurt Neil’s eyes to look at him. It also made Neil hesitant to disappoint him. 

One thing was for certain, he was not going East, and Thurmond was East. Really far east, actually. Neil wondered if they were planning on leaving without Katelyn. If they were just going to drive Neil out of the state without saying anything. Neil wasn’t the type to go along oblivious. He needed to correct their trajectory before they drove right into the jaws of death or worse. 

“Your good authority is full of shit,” Neil said. 

“How the fuck do you know?” Aaron spat. He sounded angry but Neil could see the fear beneath the veneer. His desperation to believe that he knew for sure where Andrew was. That he had a destination and a foreseeable goal to accomplish, no matter how lofty. 

“Thornund is at capacity. They haven’t bused in any new kids for over a year.” 

Nicky’s eyes went round and horrified, “you came from Thurmond?”

“Yeah,” Neil said.

It was a flat out lie. Neil had never been to Thurmond, but he had been to the sister facility in California, Drumond. Neil declined to mention that he was looking in and not looking out. He cased any camps he found along his route, learning the security and personnel rotations in case he ever got caught by a roving tracer and needed to break out. Drumond was a hellhole. A converted military training facility. Bleak and muddy, the work shifts long and the conditions poor, the prisoners badly outfitted for the cooling weather. They blew an incapacitating horn multiple times a day, a sound only colors could hear, each with their own slightly different frequency. It was torture by any definition. He couldn’t imagine that Thurmond was any different.

“It’s a big place, you could have missed him,” Kevin insisted. He seemed almost as desperate as Aaron. Andrew saved Kevin’s life and he wanted to return the favor. Neil learned at least that much from Kevin’s dream. Andrew was important to Kevin, the most important person in his life. 

“Maybe,” Neil hedged. 

Andrew could very well be held at Thurmond but Neil was not about to go east for a pipe dream. They could have a picture of Andrew behind Thormund’s fences and Neil would still try to convince them otherwise. 

“But even if I did, there’s no way you get him out without getting caught,” Neil told them. 

“If you managed it. So could we,” Aaron said. 

Aaron’s desperation reminded him of Mom when they first started running - all purpose and no plan. 

“I had help from the inside, you don’t,” Neil said. Technically it wasn’t a lie. Mom bribed a guard to get them access to Drumond’s supply of freeze-dried meats. If Neil ever saw beef jerky again it would be too, but it was almost worth the look he got at their security. The place was locked down tight, to say the least. 

“You’ll be caught before you can get inside the gates,” Neil said. 

“Not even with you helping us?” Nicky asked. 

“Not even with me,” Neil said. He was not sure that he was going to help them. This group had a history of bad judgment calls and Neil hated himself for every minute he didn’t leave them flat behind him. He needed to watch his own back and keep moving, not go off on some doomed heroic mission to save someone that could easily be dead already. 

Neil didn’t know why he stayed. 

He was alone for so long. Kevin might not remember him but Neil didn’t realize how much he needed a familiar face. 

“And we’re supposed to just take your word for it?” Aaron wore his usual pissed-off expression and Neil was starting to believe it was his only setting. 

“You don’t have to. The guards at Thurmond would be more than happy to back me up,” Neil said. 

“So that's it?” Nicky asked helplessly, “we’re back to square one?” 

They were devastated. Neil took pity on them. 

“Do you have any other clues?”

“Just one, but we can’t make heads or tails of it,” Nicky said.

“East Haven,” Aaron managed to say around his clenched teeth. 

East Haven. Neil has heard of the facility before, but he didn’t know much. Only rumors he picked up from the occasional trucker and the spare information Mom got from her contacts before they dried up. East Haven was a facility designated for Reds. A _reconditioning_ facility. Neil didn’t know what it meant, but he knew enough to know it was bad. 

Aaron already demonstrated his Blue power against the snatcher in the mustang. Neil was surprised. He did not expect identical twins to be different colors - but he never did see Andrew use an ability in Kevin’s dream. He did set off the fire alarm. The explosion. Neil resigned himself to accepting Andrew and Aaron’s difference as part of the strange, unknown rules that made greens and blues plentiful while oranges and reds were scarce. 

Neil was quiet for too long, staring into the middle distance while the rest of them stared at him.

It was bad luck, the day Neil ran into Nicky. Kevin already put a huge target on their backs and now they want to talk about breaking into government-owned-and-operated facilities full of military assets. Tantamount to breaking into a bank vault. It’s a very bad idea, and Neil could already picture how gung-ho the rest of them would look that the prospect.

“You’ve heard of it,” Aaron said. It wasn’t a question. 

“You know where Andrew is?” Naked hope shone out of Kevin’s face. 

“Only rumors. None of them good. I don’t have a location or any specifics.”

“Then what the hell good are you?” Aaron said. Neil let it go. He was clearly upset about Andrew and it was the one thing he could understand about Aaron. 

“What do you know?” Kevin asked. 

Neil looked at each of them. Nicky was growing excited. Even Aaron was having trouble looking disinterested. 

“It’s a facility for Reds.” 

Judging by the looks on their faces, neither Aaron nor Nicky knew that Andrew was a Red. Both of them whipped around to stare at Kevin, who seemed inordinately guilty. 

“Andrews’ a Red?” Nicky said it in the same way everyone else did, with or without IAAN. Abject fear with a tinge of awe. The same way they would react to Neil if they knew he was Orange. Except they would do worse to him because Andrew was their family and Neil was just some guy they met on the road. 

“I just assumed he was Blue, like Aaron,” Nicky said. 

Judging by the look on Kevin’s face, the former striker knew already. Neil said as much. It took a little of Aaron’s tender probing, but Kevin was soon speaking. 

“That’s how he got us out. He set off the fire alarm and triggered an evacuation,” Kevin admitted. 

“Everyone thinks you broke them out,” Neil accused. 

“Only because I got out and Andrew didn’t.” 

Aaron looked fit to murder at the reminder that Kevin left Andrew behind. 

Neil intervened.

“Before you kill Kevin, I think I know where we can get more information,” Neil said before he could question his reasoning. 

Three intent faces turned toward him, all suspicion of once wiped off their faces. Neil knew they were making a mistake in trusting him. Never trust anyone who dangles the thing you want the most in your face. 

“But if I’m going to help you, I need to know what happened,” Neil said.

Neil didn’t really need to know, but he wanted to. He only half understood the haze of the dream and he was looking for someone to explain it to him. 

“I don’t know,” Aaron said at a yell, “I wasn’t there!”

“Andrew was in juvie when the Wifi went down. It was the worst day of my life, to be honest with you,” Nicky said. He settled into his seat to tell their story. “He wrote a letter to Aaron explaining why he rejected him -- wait, did we tell you about that?”

Neil shook his head. 

“Okay so,” Nicky crossed his arms in midair, pointing in opposite directions, “Aaron and Andrew were separated at birth like on Dr. Phil or something, and Andrew was put in the system but Aaron stayed with their mom Tilda for reasons unknown to all of us.” 

Aaron looked like he was going to throw up. He better get ahold of himself because Neil was not in the mood to clean up vomit today. He cleaned up enough after Aaron already. 

“So they started exchanging letters like pen pals. Andrew’s last letter was actually the last mail we got, not even any junk credit card envelopes or anything. As soon as kids started being taken to camps we went to his juvie prison and -- you know, they just left them there,” Nicky’s voice choked off and he shrugged helplessly, “it was abandoned. Nothing but piles of trash and the bodies of dead kids that weren’t Andrew.” 

“How did you end up with Kevin?”

“We heard about a bunch of kids breaking out of a camp and went there, hoping Andrew would be one of them. We found Kevin, we saw him see Aaron -- and the look on his face. We knew he knew Andrew,” Nicky said. 

“So you didn’t really do anything, did you Kevin?” Neil said. Kevin didn’t have the balls. Neil didn’t know much about Kevin, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Kevin couldn’t organize a potluck nevertheless a prison break. 

“You’re right, it was Andrew,” Kevin said, “he planned the whole thing. He was right beside me during the escape but he went back in. I don’t know why. I brought them back to Caledonia to look for him but when we got there, it was burned to the ground.”

Neil could not imagine staring at freedom in the face and turning around. Nicky was crying silently. Kevin was hunched over in silent agony. Aaron looked like he was at a funeral. They were all emotionally jetlagged from spilling their whole tragic story in a rush. Neil felt bad for them. 

“You heard our life story - now you tell us how you got out of Thurmond,” Aaron said. 

“The Children’s League broke me out, I started running and haven’t stopped. The end.” 

“You can’t trust the league,” Nicky said, alarmed.

Neil gave Nicky a look, judging Nicky for thinking Neil trusted anyone.

“The League just let you go?” Kevin said suspiciously. Neil knew what he meant. The Children’s League was notorious for freeing kids and taking them captive for the same reason - to use them for what they can do. 

“Their security was nothing like Thurmond,” Neil said and left it at that. As far as Aaron and Nicky needed to know, Neil was like any other kid that got out of the camps. Kevin knew differently, and that fact was creating a growing schism between them and the cousins. Kevin gravitating toward Neil and Neil avoiding Aaron took a toll on the group dynamics after a month or two. And now Aaron and Neil had a new thing to butt heads over: Andrew. 

Neil needed to come to terms with the fact that he was giving his life over to a lost cause. 

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

* * *

Nicky found Neil on their last night on the supply run. Kevin and Aaron were asleep in the back of the cable van. They had to get up early to drive. Neil was sitting on the van’s bumper when Nicky came up beside him and sat down. Neil took a long drag of the cigarette. It was from a half-used pack he found on the ground. Neil offered the cigarette to Nicky, who accepted. Nicky took a deep inhale and started coughing up a lung, like someone who didn’t make a habit of smoking. 

“Erik is a smoker,” Nicky said as he tried to power through the cough and take another drag, “I miss him so much.” 

Neil had nothing to say to that. He still hadn’t decided if Erik was a figment of Nicky’s imagination. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about Andrew,” Nicky said. 

“It's okay. He’s your family. I’m nothing,” Neil said, believing it wholeheartedly. He was nothing - worse than nothing - a monster. 

“Neil, you’re not nothing! You’re our friend!”

Neil turned to look at Nicky and found none of the usual hapless cheer. Nicky’s face was serious and his voice emphatic. Sincere. Like it was important to him that Neil knew that he was Nicky’s friend. 

Friends. 

Just one more thing to figure out.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thank yous to all my readers, kudos and commenters. This chapter is dedicated to enid - I hope it's a light at the end of this week's tunnel for you the way it was for me. 
> 
> I also made Neil a smoker in this because he killed his mom. The smoke reminded him of her and smoking a cigarette instead of smelling it was a punishment for him. Next chapter, things get real. 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Shtare


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil takes care of business. 
> 
> Enjoy,

The atmosphere among the four of them changed after Neil burst their Thurmond bubble. Aaron was on a hair-trigger for information about Andrew and he couldn’t stop harassing Neil for details about his contact. Neil gave nothing away, mostly because he didn’t know if his contact would know anything about East Haven or Andrew. He agreed to introduce Aaron on the grounds that they stopped at the Hernandez house before heading in that direction. Neil wanted to unload the supplies and he felt obligated to tell Hernandez of their plans before following through on a new errand. It would take at least a few days to get to his contact by car and Neil didn’t want Hernandez to worry about their delayed arrival unnecessarily. 

Aaron insisted that they turn back to the house as soon as Neil gave his ultimatum. The four of them argued back and forth about it for hours. Aaron and Nicky insisted that Andrew was the top priority. Neil wouldn’t let up on the merits of going further for more supplies. Kevin lingered in the middle for a while before he sided with the cousins, much to Neil’s irritation. 

Kevin killed the cable van thirty miles from the Hernandez house. The thing sputtered and died on a long stretch of highway with no delineating features or structures of any kind for miles around. Nicky determinedly focused on the positives of the situation, musing aloud about Andrew and Neil’s mysterious contact. Aaron almost strangled Kevin, and probably would have if Neil hadn’t been there to intervene. The last place Neil expected to be was pinned blocking a blonde midget from murdering a drooly, semi-cognisant Kevin Day with his bare hands. Aaron threw himself at Kevin like a man possessed. 

Neil couldn’t avoid skin to skin contact with Aaron’s flying hands. 

__

_Andrew sat back in his chair and leaned his slouching shoulders forward. If his elbows weren’t resting on the counter in front of him they would have been propped up on his knees. Andrew’s hair was black on the tips but blond at the root, the same shade as Aaron’s hair. His identical face was expressionless and his dispassionate hazel eyes roved over Aaron with calculating clarity. Aaron felt laid bare before his twin. They were strangers who knew each other on a cellular level. For a second, he thought Andrew might be able to read his mind. Aaron flew 300 miles to meet his twin and he was terrified of being disappointed._

_Aaron hadn’t expected to meet his brother with three inches of ballistic glass between them._

_Andrew picked up the yellow phone attached to the wall._

_Neil mirrored his motion slowly, watched Aaron’s arm reach out to take the phone. He felt a hand that wasn’t his own grasp the plastic. The time it took to lift the phone to his ear felt like an eternity. Aaron had no idea what to say._

_Andrew spoke in a different voice than Aaron, deeper - rougher._

_“Who gave you those bruises?”_

_“What?”_

_“Who gave you those bruises,” Andrew’s voice was stilted and deadly with the promise of violence. “On your face.”_

_“It’s nothing. I got into a fight at school.”_

_“No you didn’t,” Andrew’s said slowly, deliberately, “your knuckles are pristine. Someone decided to beat on you and you didn’t fight back. I want to know their name or names.”_

_Aaron had an existential crisis in that moment. He could start off his relationship with his brother on a lie, or he could verbalize something he’s never been able to say aloud before. Andrew was watching him, looking for something Neil didn’t know._

_“Mom,” Aaron said, “Tilda Hemmick.”_

_“Your mom --_

_“Our Mom.”_

_“You live with our biological mother?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Do you know that I’m in care?”_

_“Yes,” Aaron threw up in Phil Higgin’s office trashcan when he heard that Andrew spent his life in foster care, “I have no fucking idea how that shit happened.”_

__I’m so sorry I wish it was me_ went unspoken, but Neil felt it nonetheless. _

_Well, that’s a pity,” Andrew said, his effect was unmoved, no different from when Aaron first sat down - flat and completely vacant. Like Andrew didn’t care that he suffered so badly and Aaron got off scot-free._

_Andrew started to laugh. It was a hollow sound._

__

Aaron fell and hit the wood panel, groaning like Neil punched him in the gut.

Neil reeled against the dashboard. A whole-body shiver went through Neil as his brain tried to reconcile what he saw in front of him with the vision of Aaron’s past - another glimpse at Andrew through the eyes of another. He acted like a dead man walking around and Neil could relate. 

Aaron glared up Neil from the floor of the van with suspicion heavy in his hateful stare.

“We should find another van,” Neil said. 

Neil and Aaron agreed to go odd in opposite directions, leaving Nicky and Kevin to babysit the supplies. Neil walked for hours, the hot sun beating down on him. There was no breeze. The hot and stagnant air was difficult to breathe. Sweat poured down Neil’s ragged back. He bemoaned his long sleeves. He needed them to cover his scars but they were making him overheat faster. He ran in small spates for the sake of time. 

Eventually, he came upon a long-haul truckers parking depot. The spaces were elongated to fit eighteen-wheelers. Some smaller cars were smattered in between the dust-coated trucks. It was clear the depot had been abandoned for a while. Neil weaved his way in between the cars. 

His gaze caught on a small U-Haul. 

It was perfect. Neil crept over the U-Haul, ducking down behind cars as he went. It was instinctual to hide from sight, even when he thought he was alone. 

“Son of a bitch!” 

The swear was accompanied by the sound of glass shattering and metal bending. Neil crept around the side of a white Escalade and peering around the front grill. 

A woman with tiny shorts and a long brown ponytail was standing about a hundred feet away. Her back was to Neil as she battled with an old minivan. The hatchback was a worthy opponent, going by the tire iron she brandished over her head. She began to beat her impromptu weapon against the car, warping the door with divots. She walked around the car and shattered every window as she went, save the windshield. 

Neil waited her out. It took at least an hour crouched behind that truck for the woman to finally start the minivan and drive off. Neil waited longer, until she was out of sight, to creep to the U-Haul. 

Miraculously, the keys were in the ignition. Neil didn’t dare hope for the impossible. He turned the key and the car shuddered to a start. It had a quarter of a tank left. Neil thanked whatever lucky star deigned to shine on him. Neil climbed into the cab and made his way back to the miscreants that became his friends.

* * *

Time passed slowly in an old U-Haul van with four men that had somewhere to be. They were uncomfortably crammed in amongst freeze-dried noodles, small towers of soup, and bags fertilized soil Neil picked out for Hernandez. Nicky had already pulverized a hundred little plastic chip bags by turning them into a personal lounge space. Kevin shamelessly pilfered the alcohol Neil collected for wound treatment. Aaron sulked in the corner, shooting hateful looks at Neil whenever he got the chance. 

The boredom and stress reached critical mass when they hit the outskirts of Flagstaff. They pulled over to the side of the road for the night, all of them were exhausted from driving in shifts through multiple nights to get back to the house as soon as possible. The mood in the van was unpleasant. Neil hadn’t forgiven Kevin for siding against him and the cousins were too anxious to be hopeful. 

Nicky decided the best way to lighten the mood was a drinking game. 

“Neil found _this,”_ Nicky said, holding up a handle of grain vodka, “at our last stop and I thought we could all use a little pick-me-up. Who is up for a little drinking game?” 

“What game?” 

Neil thought it was a waste of alcohol.

“I don’t know how to play,” Kevin said. 

Nicky was delighted to explain. 

“The rules are simple. I say something that I haven’t done, and if you’ve done the thing, you drink. If you haven’t, you don’t drink. The first one that gets too drunk to stand up loses.” 

“Sounds like fun,” Kevin said. 

“It sounds stupid,” Aaron said, even as he accepted the handle from Nicky and took the first turn. 

“Never have I ever had sex with a man,” Aaron said, holding the handle out for Nicky to take. 

“Aaron, that is unfair targeting!” 

Nicky still took a swig. Kevin took the handle from Nicky and tugged down a few too many pulls. Nicky crowed and cheered for Kevin before turning his expectant gaze on Neil. Neil could lie, but he had no interest in getting drunk and therefore vulnerable. Neil shook his head and tried not to read into Nicky’s obvious disappointment. 

“My turn,” Nicky said, “never have I ever had sex with a woman!” 

Aaron glared at his cousin as he drank. Kevin drank more than was strictly necessary. Again, Neil refrained, much to Nicky’s dismay and Aaron’s confusion. Kevin was blissed out on the booze and seemed almost relaxed. 

“Neil, say it isn’t so!”

“I’ve never played this game,” Neil said to get the attention off of himself. Neil didn’t swing and he felt no need to explain that to any of them. Nicky, Aaron, and Kevin drank even though Neil was sure Kevin never played this game. 

“Never have I ever killed a person,” Nicky’s voice was soft, almost unenthusiastic. Kevin slapped Nicky on the arm. Aaron watched Neil, utterly curious, like Neil hadn’t almost-shot someone in his defense. 

No one drank. They were all watching Neil. 

Neil didn’t take a drink but they watched him like he had, like his silence and lack of participation were out of guilt and not disinterest. Not a word was spoken and no one moved an inch. Time passed in a void. 

“Never have I been Nicky Hemmick,” Kevin said, full-on disapproving frown.

Nicky drank without a fuss. 

The game continued until the three of them finished the bottle and were too drunk to see straight. They passed out one after the other. Neil got behind the wheel and drove the last few hours to the Hernandez house.

* * *

Marlene squealed in delight over the cooking sherry Neil pulled out from among the alcohol and the noodles were a _godsend._ Marlene thanked them profusely for finally giving her something to work with and roped Nicky and Katelyn into helping her arrange a four-course meal. Neil thought it was wasteful but chalked it up to the normalcy Marlene loved so much. Katelyn was just happy that Aaron was back and the two of them disappeared almost as soon as the door closed on the van. Kevin helped Neil carry the supplies into the house.

Hernandez wanted to use the soil immediately and Neil was surprised by how happy he was to join Hernandez in the garden. They worked from the morning until late in the afternoon. 

Neil spent most of his time weeding and could say he enjoyed it. Hernandez was a quiet worker but for a few spates of small talk. For Neil, it was easy to work side by side with Hernandez no matter how hard he tried to keep Hernandez at arm’s length. Hernandez didn’t seem to notice Neil’s reticence, or if he did, he didn’t mind it. Henandez told Neil about how important it was to maintain a garden between planting seasons. After the winter passed, they would plant tomatoes and potatoes. 

Neil was pleasantly tired by the time Hernandez decided to pack it in. 

They were discussing the ins and outs of Exy when they went through the kitchen slider to find a quiet house. It was strange. Usually Marlene was puttering around the kitchen at this time of day. 

Neil saw one of Aaron’s shoes sticking out from behind the kitchen island. 

And then he was pistol-whipped. 

Neil hit the ground. His ears were ringing and his vision was blanked out white. The sun shining through the slider was blinding. Neil was disoriented. He rolled onto his stomach and struggled to get to his feet. Neil blinked against the black spots blooming in his eyes and squinted to make out faces among the frenetic shapes crowded on the other side of the room. 

It was a woman with long brown hair

“Kathy, Don’t!” 

A thick red line stretched across her forehead was the only sign that she was upside down in a ditch the last time Neil saw her. She had Hernandez in her hold. Nicky was holding Katelyn back from going after Kathy. Neil grabbed Marlene’s arm, just in case, but she merely stood, watching her husband with disbelieving eyes. 

It took Neil a long moment to piece together Kathy’s long brown hair and long, bare legs. Neil’s stomach dropped out of his abdomen like a rock off a cliff. 

“Daddy invited me to dinner, everyone,” Kathy said with a serpentine smile, her gun to Hernandez's head, “I hope you have enough place settings.” 

“Let him go,” Katelyn cried, struggling against Nicky’s grip, “Please, just let him go!”

“Katelyn, stop,” Hernandez ordered, more dour and stern-faced than Neil thought he could be. Katelyn was smiled so much because she inherited Hernandez's round cheeks and his sunny disposition. Usually, normal people made Neil uncomfortable, but he liked Hernandez. He didn’t need to ask questions to have a conversation. He didn’t seem to care where Neil came from and he kept Neil’s secrets. He was a decent man, maybe even a good one, and he was going to die because of Neil. Because Neil wasn’t vigilant enough and didn’t notice that they were being followed. Because he was the one that ran into her and didn't say anything to anyone about it. 

“Please, we’ll do whatever you want, just let my Dad go,” Katelyn heaved a breath, “Please!”

Hernandez should have been more cautious about the ragged strangers collected. He should have turned them away as soon as they came to his door. If he had, his family would be safe and his life wouldn’t be in danger. Kathy came here looking for Kevin. She held Hernandez’s life in the balance because she knew Kevin was squeamish and she wanted him to come with her willingly if not voluntarily. Kathy didn’t care about Hernandez’s life. She would kill him, Neil could see it in her eyes. 

Marlene started to cry, to beg, incoherently. 

Katelyn, apparently, was not the type to back down. 

“What do you want from us!”

Kathy’s whip-quick gaze darted from Katelyn over to Kevin. Kevin blanched and swayed beside Neil, leaning toward Kathy like he was convincing his body to take a step. 

“Don’t you dare,” Hernandez huffed at Kevin, all steel. He shook his head minutely to avoid touching the barrel of Kathy’s pistol. Neil seized Kevin’s cloth-covered wrist in a death grip. 

Kevin was losing his nerve, a twitch away from turning himself over to Kathy for Walter’s sake. Katelyn kept kicking off the floor, trying to get free, but Nicky held fast, keeping Katelyn from running into the muzzle of a loaded gun. Neil held Marlene more for confinement than comfort. He needed to make sure that she didn’t make any sudden movements. 

Hernandez’s life hanging in the balance, the whole of the room the stage for Kathy’s megalomaniacal fantasies - her delusions of grandeur.

The Hernandez’s his eyes zeroed in on Neil. 

Neil gaze, his focus, locked onto Hernandez in turn. 

Neil felt a change. 

Like a hand reaching out, Neil took hold. 

Around Neil, the room seemed to slow, colors blurring and shapes distorting into a blurred vortex of movement. Neil was in his own mind but his consciousness was clouded, static buzzing in his ears as if he was standing in a room of cracking speakers. Neil’s warping vision collapsed around Hernandez until the only solid shapes in the spinning world were Neil and Hernandez’s kind eyes. 

Like a dream, Neil saw a series of images flashed in his mind. 

_Katelyn is singing along to the radio, her feet propped up on the dashboard and bobbing to the rhythm of the music_

_Marlene is sitting at the table, her head thrown back in laughter. a lock of hair falls into her eyes and she smiles wide_

A rise of desperation that was not Neil’s own bloomed in his chest

 _A new key, an empty plot of dirt, a marble countertop, a metal bucket, Neil’s gun_

Behind the slow-moving scenes, a knowing blared like noise accompanying Hernandez’s memories - his intentions. Telling Neil what Hernandez was trying to prevent and what he needed Neil to do. Resolve encased Neil’s mind like settling cement. Neil turned the tilting perspective back in his direction, trying to break the connection and get back into his own head. It worked, but Neil took Hernandez’s will and want with him as if they were his own. A small piece of the person, a consciousness, that would survive in the echoing caverns of Neil’s subconscious. 

For Hernandez, Neil left behind an image of himself, an impression. The effort was monumental and impossibly easy. Neil only knew how to take - not to give. Leaving a trace of himself in another’s mind was something he thought he was incapable of doing. The picture and sound wasn’t much, nothing really, but it was all Neil had to give. 

_“I promise.”_

A tired man smiled sadly. 

Neil’s ears rang like amplified feedback and suddenly he was standing in the room again. Neil emerged from the spinning black vortex of his mind into the Hernandez’s kitchen in the middle of a tense standoff. The kitchen island divided the room in half, separating Hernandez from help and Kathy from opposition. 

Neil’s gaze was drawn to the marble countertop of Marlene’s dream kitchen. By the stove, perched in the far corner between the paper towel dispenser and the knife block, was a gilded metal bucket full of wooden spoons, plastic spatula, and a metal rolling pin. 

Kathy was distracted, watching Katelyn’s terror and distress with a gleam of fascination in her eyes, like she had never before seen such a display of human emotion and she was enjoying every moment of the torture she was inflicting. 

No one else’s worlds changed, beyond Neil’s, and --

Hernandez nodded to Neil with a slow blink. 

He was giving Neil a moment to get ready. 

“You think I won’t do it?”

Kathy’s finger twitched threatening on the trigger and Katelyn went stock-still. 

Neil dove for the bucket. 

A whole life spent running, where slowing down was certain death, made Neil fast. Much faster than Kathy, a celebrity turned bounty hunter. Neil seized the lip of the bucket, heedless of the falling metal pokers as he groped for the bottom a split second before Kathy noticed and began to react. Neil’s hand closed around a revolver, heavy with the weight of bullets. Neil twisted as he fell, cocking the gun as Kathy turned her weapon from Walter to Neil, fully prepared to fire. Kevin hit Kathy’s arms and the shot went wide. He saved Neil’s life, but he also gave Kathy an opening to hold Kevin at gunpoint instead of Walter. Neil hit the floor and turned the gun on Kathy and fired the six shots the gun held, aiming for the back door Kathy would have to go through in order to escape with Kevin. 

The Butcher refused to teach Neil how to handle guns, claiming a principle of close-contact violence. The dignity of looking someone in the face when you killed them. Mom refused to use knives, so she kept Neil up late the first few years of their new life, armed with a gun, a silencer, and a grim expression that told Neil that they would be here all night if he didn’t get it right. Eventually, Neil had to learn. Experience taught Neil the sound a bullet made when it hit wood, and flesh. 

Neil heard Kathy shout in pain. He hit her, but she and Kevin were out of sight. Nicky ran after them, shouting Kevin’s name. 

Neil turned to Walter, and found the man examining a new, red stain on his dress shirt. Neil darted across the kitchen and caught Walter just before his knees gave out. Neil lowered the man to the kitchen floor, bunched up his sweatshirt, and pressed it to the wound. Walter gasped in pain, his hand seizing Neil’s wrist in a tight grip. Neil stared at him, knowing what was about to happen and possessing no means of stopping it. Walter’s face was drawn tight, breath stuttered, but his eyes were clear and full of gratitude Neil had never known before. 

Neil heard a voice in his head that was not his own.

_Good boy_

The room restarted and finally processed Walter’s collapse.

“Daddy?”

“Walter!”

“No!”

Katelyn pulled Walter’s hand away from Neil’s arm. She and Marlene hovered over Walter’s gasping chest. Neil backed away. Aaron woke and took quick stock of the room. He scrambled to his feet, ran to Katelyn, and dropped down by her side. His hands pressed Neil’s sweatshirt against Walter’s wound, eliciting a cry of pain. 

“Get away from us!” 

Marlene screamed and shoved Aaron’s shoulders with surprising strength. Aaron onto his ass and stubbled back as he got to his feet. He looked at Katelyn for some kind of hint of what he should do, and found only her back. Katelyn was holding Walter’s face and looking down on him, talking, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the room. Marlene cried, and pressed her face into her husband’s chest. 

Neil did this to them. Neil killed Hernandez as surely as if he pulled the trigger himself. He was the one that Kathy followed back to the house. This was his fault. 

Nicky returned empty-handed and utterly defeated. When he noticed Walter on the floor, his expression crumpled. Both hands flew up to cover his mouth and he slowly shook his head back and forth like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

Walter shuddered, and breathed his last breath. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Nicky rasped, “god, what have we done,”

Aaron was too horrified to speak, his face chalk white and his mouth hanging open. His eyes bulged like he could not comprehend what he had just witnessed. Nicky grabbed his cousin in a sideways hug. Aaron didn’t react where he usually shoved Nicky away. 

“Leave,” Neil hissed to Nicky and Aaron, “leave right now.” 

Neil herded the two of them to the same door Kathy disappeared through. They needed to leave, right now. They needed to find Kevin before the trail got too cold. 

“I wish you had never come here,” Katelyn’s mother mumbled, “I wish I had never seen your faces.” 

Neil could give her this one, small mercy. 

He reached for her shoulder, and slipped into her mind. Neil was bombarded with ripe grief, overwhelming and agonizing. A glimpse into the horror that her life had just become. Eating his chest from the inside out. He saw Marlene’s memories, snippets of scenes hovering in a vast nothingness, slipping in and out of focus. Neil found Nicky, Kevin, Aaron. Ever so slowly, Neil pulled the memories of them into himself, the impression of Neil disintegrating within the snapshots even as the images melted into Neil’s mind, his presence instinctively removed from every mind he touched. Just like Mom. With the exception of Walter. The man’s face hovered just beyond Neil’s sight, different versions of his presence meeting in the merging of Neil and Marlene’s memories. 

Neil let go before he took away everything Marlene had left. 

Returning to himself was like being doused by a bucket of water. Relief - then bitter cold.

Katelyn next. Neil had no idea how a Green would react to his mental intrusion. Katelyn crawled away from her father’s corpse, away from Neil. To Katelyn, Neil must be just like Kathy. 

“Please, Neil,” Katelyn said, her eyes glowing an unnatural green, “I don’t want to forget him.” 

Neil had a feeling that she suspected him, if not knew what he was from the beginning. It explained her skittishness and flickering glances better than a close call with a bullet. A monster was infinitely more terrifying, and damaging, than a mere handgun. Neil always intended to wipe himself from their minds, but after this, the memories were too entwined. If he removed himself, he removed the rest of them as well. 

Walter died in a home invasion gone wrong. He protected his family at the cost of his life and the thief got away with nothing of value. It would be so easy for Neil to Katelyn and Marlene back on their chartered courses, free from Neil’s tainting influence. 

Katelyn begged. 

“Being Orange doesn’t make you a bad person, Neil,” her voice trembled, “it doesn’t matter what happened yesterday or what you did today, you get to choose the kind of person you want to be tomorrow,” she was crying now, “you can choose to be a different person, a better person,” sobbing, “my Dad told me that a lot growing up.” 

Katelyn was afraid, but she looked Neil in the eye. If she was going to die, she wanted to face it, as her father had. She knew what he was capable of, and what he was going to do. She would fight him and rip herself apart in the process. 

She was more right than she knew. Neil died many times before IAAN changed the world and Neil’s life irreparably. He had worn different names and been different people, none of them were as dangerous and heartless as Neil. Neil was something more than human and something worse than evil. 

“What kind of man are you going to be, Neil?”

In his mind, a sound echoed as clearly as if he had heard it with his ears. Katelyn’s soprano vibrato singing one of those pop songs that all sounded the same. Another voice in his head that wasn’t his own. 

Neil turned and walked away 

Katelyn crying subsided, her adrenaline fading into stunned relief to have her life spared. The shock of her loss settled around her like cement. Neil would be gone before the weight of the pain dragged Katelyn under. 

“Neil,” Katelyn called in a cracking voice, “is my Mom gonna be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“And Aaron?”

“Him too,” Neil said. 

“I can take him,” Neil offered out of guilt and fondness, “somewhere nice.”

“No,” Katelyn was definitive, her voice clear. She rested a hand on her father’s calf and wiped tears off her face with her free sleeve, “I’ll take care of him.”

Neil left Katelyn to her grief.

* * *

“We have to get Kevin back,” Neil announced when he finally made it outside. 

His time at the safe house was crucial for his leg. Neil stretched. He could run freely, finally. For once, he was running towards something instead of away. Chasing the future instead of desperately trying to escape it. A future where Neil could finally stop running. For a moment, Neil thought he found it and then it was taken away. That broken fantasy was for later. Now, Neil needed to find Kevin and stop Kathy. 

Nicky and Aaron were listless, all the wind out of their sails. Walter’s death and Kevin’s kidnapping hung in the air around them, a dark cloud cast on a sunny day. They looked like they were ready to lay down and die, or at least sleep, where they stood. All three of them had run from the house, so desperate to get away they forgot they forgot the U-Haul was parked in the back. They could find another car. 

“What are we supposed to do, Neil? Kathy has weapons and experience and money, and crazy!” Nicky was getting frantic. “We’re not like her Neil, no one can beat full-on psychotic break.” 

Neil was more like Kathy than he was Nicky or Aaron. Or Kevin. Neil stared into the empty space next to Nicky and pictured the way Kevin slouched against the nearest vertical surface in his morning grogginess. Kevin was the only part of a life that Neil might get to keep if he could hold onto it. Hernandez wasn’t willing to let Kevin go and neither was Neil. 

“I’m guessing you have a stupid idea,” Aaron directed to Neil. 

“The stupidest idea I’ve ever had.” 

Neil never anticipated two car chases in as many months.

* * *

It would be impressive, Aaron thought, for the ginger disaster to come up with a plan worse than his last. Neil’s decisions got people killed. Good people, one of the best people he knew. The sight of Neil reminded Aaron of the way Walter’s face went slack after he took his last breath. He went limp, seeming to sink slightly into the floor. 

It was Aaron’s fault that Katelyn’s father died. He was the one that brought Kevin and Neil to their house. Aaron led Kathy right to Katelyn’s doorstep, endangering her family, when they had no idea what they were dealing with. Aaron was the stupid one, for thinking anywhere was safe. For thinking he could rest and ignore the wreck the world had become for a little while. 

Walter’s death was Aaron’s fault. For a minute, he stopped looking for Andrew. None of this would have happened if Aaron had made Andrew his first priority, the way Andrew had for Aaron. 

“We need to find the right kind of car,” Neil enunciated like he was talking to a child. Neil examined the tire treads dug into the dirt like he was some kind of CSI. “She was driving a compact SUV, so we need a truck, a big one.” 

Neil told them about a car lot they passed on their way to the safe house. For once, Aaron’s apathy overpowered his suspicion. Aaron walked obediently down the side of the highway, following after Nicky in contemplative silence until they came upon Neil’s foretold used car lot. He waited by the road while Nicky and Neil found the car. 

They pulled up next to him, and Aaron though Neil chose the truck just to spite him and he height. It was an Escalade, absurdly tall, so much so that the running board was useless. Aaron had to pull himself in bodily, using the door and the seatback. Neil was driving. Nicky rode shotgun and pointed them the way he saw Kathy and Kevin disappear. 

Neil had a lead foot. Neil was still going over a hundred miles an hour and speeding up. Nicky was pressed back against the seat. Neil was leaning forward, like the car was not going fast enough for him. 

“Neil,” Nicky whimpered, “we can’t save Kevin if we die.”

Neil said nothing. The guy only had two settings: smart-mouth asshole and cryptic, brooding teenager. He was going for the later at the moment. 

By some unbelievable stretch of luck, they caught up with Kathy. Nicky spotted the minivan ahead of them, a mile in the lead on a particularly flat stretch of road.

The Escalade careened down the highway at 120 miles an hour. 

“Neil, what are you doing?”

Aaron realized they probably should have asked that question before they got in the car. Regardless of whatever Josten planned on doing, it’s not like Aaron and Nicky could get out of it now. Not everyone was insane enough to jump out of a moving vehicle. 

He just hope he lived long enough to meet Andrew.

* * *

Kevin knew he was going to die, he just didn’t know how painful it was going to be. 

Kathy watched him in the rearview mirror with hungry eyes that reminded him of Riko. If she took him in, Riko would find him. Kevin had no doubt that the Master was able to pull some strings and keep Riko out of the camps. Those same strings would tell him if Kevin was brought in by a tracer. Kathy would probably cut out the middleman and take Kevin to Evermore personally. 

“Don’t look so worried, Kevin,” Kathy consoled, “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

She already punched him in the face and handcuffed his hands behind his back.

Kevin rolled from his back to his knees, the open trunk tall enough to fit him. He used his core to force his body upright, canting into the paneling to keep from falling back over. Kevin barely avoided getting a face full of the jagged glass still clinging to the broken back windshield. 

Out of the open space, Kevin saw a truck behind Kathy’s minivan. It was gaining fast. 

Probably another tracer coming to steal Kathy’s bounty. To drive her off the road as Aaron did, but with less power. Kevin hoped the grill killed him on impact. He did not want to be caught in the crossfire of two people fighting over who got to take him to Riko. Kevin would rather die than go back but he preferred not to die at all. Kevin needed to find Andrew because he owed it to him to make good on their deal. 

The truck got close enough to fill the rear windshield frame. Kevin heard the roar of the engine at the same time that he saw the flash of red in the driver’s seat. 

The truck tapped the corner of Kathy’s bumper and the car went spinning out. Kevin lunged down to avoid getting thrown from the van, the collision nearly dislocating his shoulder. His stomach dropped at the sickening give of rubber losing friction and the tires sliding on asphalt. They spun until they stopped. 

The car tipped onto two wheels. Just when Kevin thought the car would flip over, the rest of the tires came down hard, knocking Kevin’s head against the trunk.

* * *

Neil slammed on the brakes to avoid crashing into Kathy’s car, again. He was out of the truck as soon as it came to a stop. 

The bounty hunter, Kathy, had Kevin out of the car and pinned to the pavement, a gun held to the back of his head. One heeled foot was propped on Kevin’s back. 

Neil ducked down and took cover behind the truck’s fender. Close enough to help them if he got an opening. Nicky and Aaron hovered behind the bumper, peeking over the edge. 

“Come any closer and I’ll shoot!”

Satisfied with her threat, Kathy started talking to Kevin. 

“You know - I always wanted you for my talk show. Kathy Ferguson in the Morning? You would have seen it.”

“Can’t recall,” Kevin said, his face pressed to the asphalt. 

“I’m going to have a little talk with your friend about my car. I had to hotwire a minivan to get here Kevin, a minivan,” Kathy emphasized, trying to impose upon Kevin the indignity of a hatchback. “I can’t touch him, but he’s going to pay for my car, one way or another.”

Neil’s first instinct was to run, but he didn’t. Neil did know what to do with that. The only thought that came to mind was of Andrew and his strong back silhouetted against the snow and darkness. When Andrew had the opportunity to run, he didn’t run away, he ran towards the danger and he saved Kevin. 

“But you’re going to pay upfront, aren’t you, Kevin. Your value has gone up a great deal since the last time I found you. Some very eager men back east are willing to pay a million bucks to get you back. A million dollars - in this dead economy - I could have whatever I wanted. Whatever life would please me best. There might even be room for you in it, Kevin.” 

Kathy was leaning over Kevin when Neil got his opening. He crept up behind her and wrapped his fingers around her throat. Neil’s fingers clawed into Kathy’s windpipe as his mind smashed into her brain. 

She went silent and still. Frozen. A perpetual state of stagnation until Neil commanded her or let her go. 

Kevin scrambled away on his hands and knees, his knees scraping on the pavement as he went to Nicky and Aaron. 

Neil was preoccupied with Kathy.

Her mind was a runway show featuring insecurity and narcissism in equal measure. The intensity was like over-sugared coffee, almost overwhelming to his senses. He heard the way she bullied her mother and the joy she took in tormenting her assistant. He knew what she thought about people of color, immigrants, and single mothers. He saw the moment she realized her show was over, the resentment she felt for her weeping coworkers - and the hatred she had for the dead children that took her dreams away from her.

The first mind Neil entered was his mother’s, unconscious and uncontrollable, an earthquake tearing everything apart. 

The last mind pulled him in. Walter’s desperation reaching out and latching onto Neil. 

With Richard Pierce, it was about surviving. 

It was different from Kathy’s mind. Neil had a goal - something he was trying to accomplish while taking painstaking measures to cause as little damage as possible. It was easy to sit at the secretary’s desk plopped at the end of the runway. Neil flipped through the Rolodex of memories and pulled out the important pieces. 

Neil let go of her neck and walked in front of her so he could see her face. So she could see his eyes. So he could make sure she was getting his message.

“Kathy?”

“Yes?”

Her face was a neural-pleasant. All contexts and associations washed away. Kathy in her purest form. Her voice was gentle but eager to please. 

“Listen to me very carefully Kathy. You are going to take off your shoes,” Kathy obeyed immediately and removed her heeled shoes. 

“Then, you are going to walk into the forest and keep walking. Whatever happens, don’t stop for anyone or anything,” Neil felt the instructions set it, paying attention for the first time to the way he could mold her mind with a thought.

“Guess what, Kathy?”

“What?”

“You can breathe underwater. So when you hit the ocean, you will want to go for a swim. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” 

“Goodbye, Kathy.”

“Goodbye,” Kathy replied, eyes vacant, as she turned and walked into the woods. 

Neil passed out cold on the pavement.

* * *

One thing Nicky knew for sure, they would all probably be dead without Neil. 

Kevin would definitely be dead.

Kevin watched Neil’s unconscious body with an approximation of hero worship as Aaron cut Kevin out of Kathy’s zip ties. The awed, profoundly grateful stare of someone plucked from the jaws of death at the last moment, like he could believe he was alive. The wonder of how impossible it was that someone like Neil, someone that could save people, really existed. 

Nicky was only good for causing a distraction and driving through checkpoints. If Aaron had not shot Neil, Nicky would have been the biggest threat to their little group. He was loud and obnoxious and never knew when to keep his mouth shut. They were too polite to say anything, but Kevin knew he annoyed Aaron and Kevin. 

Nicky’s new family was much more supportive and loving than his last, if in their own special ways. 

Almost complete. 

Aaron and Kevin were starting to lose faith. After a year of goose-eggs, it seemed like they would never find Andrew. Wherever he was, none of them had the knowledge or the ability to get to him. His cousin was lost in the bureaucracy of the new American government, locked away behind fences, out of sight and unreachable. 

Then they met Neil. 

A boy entirely unaffected in the face of killer soccer-moms and trees flying through the air like massive, ugly birds. Neil, who didn’t flinch as he stitched up his own leg. Neil, that didn’t kill Aaron for almost killing him. 

Nicky saw people do much worse for much less, once IAAN broke all the rules. 

Neil was a good person. 

The world needed more good people and Nicky wanted to be around them. Walter was a good person. He made bad coffee but great eggs and never read the newspaper. Nicky sat with him quietly in the early hours of the morning more than once. Neil was the only reason more good people didn’t die when Kathy caught up to them. 

Neil was a good person capable of stopping bad people.

Neil made Nicky believe in impossible things again.

Nicky realized how hopeless he had become after Neil scared off that guy at the depot store. Neil’s mercy was proof that they could live on their own terms without having to resort to killing for survival. The relief at getting away was a high for Nicky, higher than he’s been since this whole thing started. Neil gave that to them; the possibility that things might get better. 

Nicky didn’t know anything about Neil, at least not thing true, but Nicky didn’t care, and he still trusted him. He trusted Neil to know the right thing to do, and to do his best to make sure nobody got hurt. He instinctively shielded Katelyn with his body when Kathy blew up the door. He pushed Nicky away from the gunfire, behind cover. 

Neil was the one that got Walter back in time to say goodbye to his family. 

He got Kevin back from Kathy and saved his life in the process. 

Nicky remembered waiting at the mile marker, agonizing over the bereft shadow he saw in Neil’s face as he sacrificed himself to save the three people that kidnapped him and shot him in the leg. Nicky has never met anyone so selfless. Has never felt relief like he did when he saw Neil limping towards them, haloed in sunrise light. Kevin and Nicky lifted an unconscious Neil into the Escalade and they just started driving, aimlessly. Neil could direct them when he woke up. 

Neil’s hollow eyes looked at Nicky and said, “Why didn’t you run?”

“We weren’t going to leave you behind,” Nicky replied. 

Neil was taken aback, to put it lightly. 

Nicky looked forward to proving Neil wrong in the future.

Next stop, Andrew. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. 
> 
> The first arc has come to a climactic close and I have no excuses.
> 
> All I can say is that the death of Hernandez marks the arrival of Andrew. 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Shtare


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse into Andrew's reality, from the beginning. 
> 
> Enjoy,

Andrew didn’t know what to think when the bodies started dropping. 

His cellmate, Mike, was one of the first. One morning, in late September, Mike got a migraine. An hour later, Mike was bleeding from every orifice on his face before he collapsed onto the linoleum floor. 

Andrew remembered the air vents blowing in hot, dry California air into the prison, vaguely hot-dog scented from the meatpacking plant down the road. Mike had been complaining about eating prepackaged cafeteria almost as much as his headache. Andrew sat silently beside him, giving the appearance of listening without absorbing any of Mike’s endless string of complaints. 

Mike went from talking about nothing to seizing uncontrollably in the span of a blink, his body spasming so fast he seemed to blur. A minute later he was still again, but this time there was a puddle of blood steady spreading from beneath him.

The block was locked down quickly. Andrew couldn’t believe his luck. When he was escorted back to his room and the door closed and locked behind him, he was actually, truly alone. The COs withdrew to the admin building during a lockdown. Without anyone patrolling the halls, Andrew was blissfully alone for the first time in years. Mike’s bitching was a faint echo in the back of his mind, the sorry side effect of the setting and an eidetic memory. 

Uncertain how long it would last, Andrew made use of the time. 

Andrew opened his desk drawer and fished out Aaron’s most recent letter, still unopened. The rest were pressed into the pages of a copy of Catcher in the Rye his social worker bought him out of pity after she saw the conditions of Maximum security juvenile detention. Andrew found the book irritating more than anything else, but it was the perfect place to keep Aaron’s letters from prying eyes. If Andrew happened to glance at them during the day, he was just reading a book. 

Aaron was the one thing that was solely Andrew’s. The only real family he had. Someone he dared to care about and someone that actually loved him back in spite of his fuckup nature.

_Andrew,_

_It was picture day at school today. The photos are for the yearbook that Mom definitely won’t let me buy. “Useless and expensive,” I can already hear her say. I can’t help but think about the stack of yearbooks from my sixteen years of public education, probably just sitting in someone’s house collecting dust. A picture of me in it next to someone I don’t recognize - someone that isn’t you._

_I asked Mom about you, finally. At first, she pretended not to know what I was talking about. When she heard your name, she burst into tears and ran from the room. She feels guilty for giving you up. She regrets it, I’m sure._

_It took a little convincing, but I got here to agree to let you move home when you get out. As soon as your sentence is up, I’ll be waiting outside those gates, and so will she. We’ll all go back home together._

_It’ll all work out. Have faith in me._

_Aaron._

Andrew was ambivalent about Tilda. He wondered if she punished Aaron for any of those conversations. For cajoling her into letting Andrew stay. Andrew didn’t know why he was given up and Tilda clearly wasn’t volunteering any information. Truthfully, Andrew didn’t care. What happened, happened, and there was no changing it. Tilda decided years ago that she only wanted one son and Andrew had to deal with the consequences of that decision. 

Andrew got put away for dealing with those consequences in the way he best saw fit. The judge didn’t agree that Andrew was within his rights to break Drake’s jaw for breaking into Andrew’s bedroom in the middle of the night one too many times. For letting Aaron’s name past his lips and into Andrew’s ear. As soon as Drake turned his designs on a twin picture, Andrew knew he had to take care of the problem. Juvenile detention was a small price to pay for Drake eating out of a straw for six to eight months.

Andrew got Aaron’s address from his initial letter and sent a reply. Nothing else to do, sitting in detention.

Aaron sent a letter back, and all of a sudden, Andrew had a brother. A reason to live. To get on with his life. To give a shit at all. 

It was two weeks after Aaron’s visit that Mike kneeled over. 

The lockdown was lifted after they had time to clean up the blood. Not a day later, five other kids dropped dead in the span of a few hours. There were over a hundred kids in the facility and not a day went by when someone wasn’t missing at the next scheduled lunchtime. After a week, they didn’t bother lifting the lockdown when a body fell. They just dragged the person out of the room by their ankles and cleaned up around the prone forms of the other inmates, all on their bellies by command, per protocol when a lockdown is called in a common area. The protocol got increasingly lax the more kids died. Their recreational hours were cut to the point where they were confined to their rooms other than for mealtimes. The library was restricted and visiting hours were eliminated. 

The pens were supervised. A lockdown forbade writing letters - unless you had a broken-off edge of a hardwood desk from the library. Andrew had been saving it for the perfect occasion. He intended to use it as a shiv, but it would suit as a writing implement in a jam. 

They never lifted the lockdown, but the COs still went on patrol. 

Andrew was forced to blackmail a guard into sending the macabre letter through the mail. Andrew caught the guard pushing one of the younger boys into a storage closet. Andrew knew to report the guy for misconduct would do nothing in the long run, but the threat of exposure was enough to get him a favor. The man glared hatefully at Andrew but took the letter nonetheless. 

Within a month, there were only a dozen kids left in the facility. Half of the number Andrew had seen at lunch the previous day. The guards rounded up Andrew and the rest of the survivors and cloistered them in the A Block at the main building. 

Andrew peaked into the other rooms through the skinny windows as he was escorted out of his wing. Bodies were left on the floor, where they fell. Andrew wondered what kind of stench hid behind closed doors. 

Andrew was forced to leave everything behind, including his book. Andrew tucked the novel between the mattress and the box spring. He was able to hide his makeshift weapon in his shoe. No showers in a lockdown. 

Andrew lost track of how many days they were kept in the A building. It was maximum security, tighter than the juvenile facility. Andrew was confined to a cell instead of the small, stripped-bare room he was kept in up to this point. Andrew wondered if it was a facility for adult inmates or the particularly violent teenage offenders. Did space open up due to an administrative change, or an unnatural phenomenon? The kind that had kids dropping dead without warning or symptoms. 

Andrew’s musings became more urgent when the correctional officers started abandoning their posts. There was no grand announcement made over the intercoms, but Andrew noticed the dwindling faces and increasingly sparse patrols. 

One morning, no one came at all. The cells didn’t open for breakfast. No one came by to hand out bottled water. No pent up prison guards banged batons against the bars. The guards left the lights on on their way out, which meant cruel and unusual sleep for them. 

The rest of the survivors threw a party, but Andrew they were in trouble. 

Whatever epidemic hit the prison must have spread. 

They could only last for three days in their cells unless someone brought them water. Andrew knew something was wrong. Blue-collar men and women didn’t just stop coming to work one day. He didn’t hear any unions chanting for better benefits outside, so something must have happened. 

Maybe whatever took most of the kids in the facility had finally spread to the rest of the country. 

After almost a day of nothing, an alarm sounded and the cell doors slid open. 

Andrew took his time getting to his feet. 

Before Andrew could get out of his cell, a shadow fell across the door. 

“I’ve wanted to teach you a lesson from the beginning. You shouldn’t have messed with me.”

It was the correctional officer Andrew blackmailed to send his letter. He didn’t bother learning the guy’s name. He was tall, like Drake, with biceps the size of Andrew’s head. His broad shoulders spanned the threshold of Andrew’s cell. He wasn’t intimidating to Andrew at first, but that quickly changed when there were no security cameras as evidence or morally upright guards to check his behavior. 

“Nobody to protect you now, Andrew. According to the news, it’s the end of days out there, which means it’s the end of days in here too. The apocalypse means that I get to do what I want when I want, and what I want to do, is you.” 

He was so confident in Andrew’s helplessness that he didn’t rush Andrew after his little speech. He just loitered there in the threshold, waiting for Andrew to start screaming and begging, most likely. The fucked up types liked that kind of shit. 

Andrew was still deciding what to do. Letting this asshole touch him was not an option. Andrew would kill him first. If what he said about the world was right, Andrew would get away with it. Because god-forbid someone protects themselves from attack. The legal system preferred silent victims and clear-cut cases. None of the abuse he endured was considered before the verdict of his guilt was rendered. Andrew became a victim of the state’s incompetent stewardship again. And here he was, for the umpteenth time, trapped with someone who wanted to make him suffer for their pleasure. Except this time Andrew was old enough to fight back. The rest of the guards were gone, so there was no one to stop him. 

That guy pissed him off. 

Andrew was not known for being in touch with his feelings but he still had them. The strongest and most familiar was anger. Raging, blistering, all-consuming anger. 

Andrew had only been so furious in his life once before -- the night he turned on Drake. The reminder added an edge of desperation to his anger that sends Andrew’s heart pounding. 

Heat suffused Andrew’s skin like he was standing under outside, under the sun. Like he was embarrassed for all the world to see. Like he had a fever. Like he was in the desert. 

Like he was on fire. 

The correctional officer rushed Andrew. 

A burst of bright light explodes into being in an inferno of flash-fire. The force of the blast was enough to send the would-be rapist flying. 

Andrew struggled to comprehend the pile of ashes that were once his cot. The black scorch marks on the metal bars. The melting paint weeping down the walls like tears. 

Andrew was on fire and he felt no pain. Andrew’s shirt disintegrated into nothing and he didn’t even notice. 

Andrew left his cell and leaned over the railing to the ground floor below. His attacker lay there unmoving, burned alive. His skin was cracked and split, the edges curling inward and blackened from the heat. The parts that weren’t burned were melted and lumpy like a candle. A handful of kids crept towards the body to get a better look. 

The alarm that preceded a patrol sounded in the deathly quiet barracks. 

A loud hissing sound followed. A few small and cylindrical objects were thrown into the cell block by a gloved hand. A plume of opaque white gas spurted to life as a shiny metal canister rolled into the corner. 

The kids on the first level coughed until they passed out, bodies hitting the floor. 

Anyone throwing smoke bombs into a federally funded prison complex was no one Andrew wanted to meet 

Andrew held his breath. He needed to retain awareness for as long as possible. He needed to notice if they did something to him. The longer he stayed awake, the better chance he had to escape or to hear something useful about that calamity had befallen the world. Whatever it was, Andrew knew it was bad. 

Andrew stepped back from the railing, laid down, and waited for the smoke to overtake him. 

He was still conscious when the men in black tactical vests and gas masks stormed the cell block. They were outfitted like military personnel but moved with a sort of clumsiness of a kid in a Halloween costume. 

They started picking over the unconscious kids one by one. 

One military goon carried a device Andrew didn’t recognize, circular and flat with a large viewscreen and a protruding handle like a metal detector. A man waved the device over an unconscious kid.

The rest of them had guns. AK-47s, to be specific. 

The machine _dinged_ and the screen lit up blue. More men came and dragged that kid away. 

Every unconscious body got scanned. The machine changed color between kids.

They took the kids that registered blue and yellow. They left the green kids behind. 

Boots on the stairs vibrated the metal beneath Andrew’s head. He struggled to hold onto consciousness as he was surrounded by boots. Andrew relaxed his muscles and focused on not letting the panic of constricted lungs overtake him. He let out his held breath in a slow, measured exhale, hopefully, imperceptible to their guests. 

Whether he got taken or left behind, he was screwed. 

The boots parted for the guy with the scanner. 

Silence, then sound. 

Instead of a chipper _ding,_ the machine emitted a grating alarm.

“Red,” a distorted voice said.

“Bingo,” replied another. 

Hands lifted Andrew. He was thrown over someone’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry. They took their sweet time walking him out of the cellblock. Someone else shadowed the footsteps of the person carrying Andrew. 

The voice that emerged sounded young. 

“So that was his handiwork, down there?”

“The barbeque? Oh, yeah. It’s your lucky day kid. Get ready to see more money than you’ve ever held in your life.” 

“He doesn’t look like much.” 

A hand fisted in Andrew’s hair, threatening to pull his face up. Andrew would give himself away, he knew it. 

“Careful, you could hurt yourself.”

The hand let him go.

They didn’t go through any checkpoints, but Andrew was greeted by the heat of the sun on his back and fresh air against his face before long. His lungs were burning. 

Andrew took a deep breath. 

“What the fuck!”

Andrew was unceremoniously dropped on the ground, but at least he could breathe. His eyes blurred and swam as he struggled to his feet, lightheaded. Some of the smoke must have gotten in. 

Andrew held his arms up, warding off the two guys with a threat he didn’t fully understand yet. The men balked, backing away with their arms raised, faces contorted in a terror so intense that they forgot they could overpower Andrew with their guns. Andrew didn’t know what to do. He didn’t understand why these men were collecting kids or why they were so interested in him. 

One thing Andrew did know, it was summer in California. Prime wildfire season. 

_Red_

_Fire_

Desperation and rage. 

The prison was surrounded by a sparse forest. A Hummer was parked out front, next to a pickup with the tailgate down, giving Andrew a clear view of Henry Salvo and Enrique Jones’ unconscious bodies laid out of the flatbed, one on top of the other like sacks of flour. 

Andrew was being taken against his will by people that planned to do something terrible to him and the others.

Andrew needed to escape. 

They were surrounded by trees, overly dry from too many summer droughts. Andrew felt something building up inside him. An immense pressure. Andrew set his focus on the forest behind the men that watched him with fear in their eyes. A heat burned in his core, suffusing his being and spreading into his limbs like a pressure cooker looking for release. 

Andrew didn’t try to fight the feeling. 

Fire burst into being right where Andrew was looking, engulfing a tree and jumping to the next, expanding exponentially in the space of a moment like an exploding propane tank from a shitty action movie. The two men screamed and ran for cover back into the prison. 

They left the keys in the ignition. 

It was easy to steal the Hummer and tear down the prison drive, a single stretch of concrete that connected to an access road Andrew remembered from the drive in. If his memory served him, it was twenty miles to the main highway. 

In his haste to leave, Andrew failed to notice three kids in the back. They were awake by the time Andrew pulled onto the main highway. 

They were understandably upset.

“What the fuck are you doing, Minyard?” said the only one brave enough to speak. The fear in his voice was evident. 

“I saved your ass from the commandos that gassed the block,” Andrew said, “you should be grateful.”

“You’re a fucking murderer,” piped up the skinny, acne-ridden runt that had been there when Andrew arrived. Andrew remembered his name but wouldn’t dignify using it.

“Just pull over and let us out,” said the one that spoke up first. 

“You got it,” Andrew pulled over into the breakdown lane and slammed on the brakes. The Hummer lurched to a sliding stop. Andrew unlocked the back doors. “Get the fuck out.”

Andrew left them on the side of the road in their prison skivvies. 

Judging by the lack of cars on the road, Andrew didn’t have to worry too much about the cops. He tore down the highway at a reckless speed. Whatever happened at the prison clearly happened everywhere else. Andrew was surprised that there were no bodies laying on the side of the road. The disease that killed most of the kids in the facility must only affect a portion of the population. A pretty hefty portion, considering the disease was able to derail national infrastructure to the point that the prison system collapsed. 

He was in Southern California. Aaron’s last letter was sent from Arizona. If he drove straight through, he could get there in less than a day. Andrew knew the way. He saw a paper map of southern California once. He could see lines delineating the highways and roads of the state in his mind’s eye. Sometimes the curse of eidetic memory was useful. 

Andrew realized quickly that navigating was going to take more than knowing the roads. 

The drive was eye-opening, to say the least. 

It was pandemonium. The city seemed consumed with chaos, police cars overturned in the street, rows of shop windows broken in, looting in progress. The outskirts of the city burned, rows upon rows of tenement houses ablaze and not a fire truck in sight. The street was relatively clear. Some cars were abandoned in the street, left on and idling in the middle of the road. Andrew had to swerve to avoid more than one car, as well as other obstacles like downed power lines and running people. Andrew saw a fight break out on the sidewalk next to his car. He stopped the car to watch. A man in a blue jacket knocked a polo-wearing type out with one punch. He followed the guy down, betting his face with blow after blow. 

Andrew drove away, coming across similar scenes as he made his way out of the city and into the hills. Traffic was built up on the interstate The cars were stopped and off, entirely abandoned. Whatever happened on the interstate, it happened a while ago. Some obstacle that backed up for miles. Andrew pulled off the road and onto the grass embankment. He drove at an angle, carefully holding the wheel so the tires didn’t slip and spin out. 

Andrew got to the exit before the cars let up. From there, it was a straight shot. 

Andrew drove until he ran out of fuel. Fucking gas guzzlers. 

Apparently the gas stations were both abandoned and out of order in the wake of the epidemic. Andrew wasted an entire day scavenging for a useable vehicle. Andrew found a sedan with a quarter of a tank. It was enough to get him where he was trying to go. 

Aaron’s house was empty. It was a little two-bedroom bungalow he shared with their biological mother. It was the opposite of cozy. Andrew broke it through the dingy back window. The countertops were barren beyond junk mail and dollar store salt and pepper shakers. It was devoid of furniture save a lonesome couch. The carpet was stained and looked like it had never been scrubbed before. No pictures of Aaron adhoured the walls, no childhood sports trophies decorated the mantle, no report cards pinned to the fridge door. A sink full of dirty dishes attracted a cloud of flies. There was no TV in the living room and the microwave had been torn out of the wall, leaving exposed wires poking out of the base. A fire hazard. A crusted pile of old vomit stank up a corner. 

The two bedrooms were empty but for beds and the bathroom was disgusting. Andrew spotted an old syringe, a spoon, and some tinfoil sitting on the counter. 

So much for the idyllic life Andrew imagined for Aaron at his lowest points. The fantasy he used to flagellate himself in moments of deep self-loathing when the burning fire of jealousy was the only thing keeping him warm

Apparently privilege comes in shades. It wasn’t all or nothing. There was always someone with more, and someone with less. Andrew was someone with less, and so was Aaron, if in a different way. Andrew would still have preferred Aaron’s hell over his own but that way a pointless wish. There was no changing the past. Hell - there was no changing the future.   
At least, that’s what Andrew believed when he was in juvie. 

He wasn’t in juvie anymore. He was free, not just in terms of physical proximity, but in terms of societal expectations as well. If the prison system collapsed, the school system had to be the same, along with the colleges, hospitals, and social services. McDonald's was probably the only business that still had it’s doors open.

Aaron wasn’t there and neither was anyone else. He helped himself to Aaron’s closet, burned his juvie jumpsuit, and made himself scarce. 

Andrew broke into the house next door. It was similarly deserted. The same could be said of every house on the block. 

Andrew needed to find Aaron 

Andrew needed to find Aaron, but first, he needed more information, and there was only one person he could trust

* * *

“A Red was scanned at a facility in California,” said Jean Moreau, his lilting french accent adding an air of disdain to the words. 

“Pack my shit,” Riko said as he turned and strode down the hall, whistling all the way, seemingly oblivious to the pleading arms and hands reaching out from panel slats that lined either side of the wall. He gave no reactions to the moans of pain or screams of terror coming from the gated cells. When the door closed behind him, it was definitive.

* * *

Conveniently for Andrew, Bee had a house in Arizona. It was her retirement home, the place she planned to go when she was finally done saving the wretched refuse of America’s youth. 

Andrew knocked and the door opens for him. Bee is waiting on the other side in her typical cardigan and slippers. _I like to be comfortable_ she said during his first session _I hope you’ll be comfortable here too._

“Andrew,” Bee said, seemingly unsurprised in that calm, unflappable way she took all of his abuse, “I’m so happy to see you. Come inside.”

Andrew followed Bee into the house. The building is old and stately, with a manor-esque quality to it’s carved wood banisters and second-floor landing. Bee lead him down the hall, passing by multiple rooms of closed doors, and into the kitchen. 

A handful of boys stood around the granite island set apart from the kitchen countertop. The vast majority of them were noticeably younger than Andrew. He’s not surprised. Bee had a way of collecting stays. 

“Everyone, this is Andrew. He’s an old friend of mine and will be staying here as long as he likes. Be polite.” 

Bee’s boys didn’t bother introducing themselves. One or two of them nodded in acknowledgment of Andrew. The rest just stared at him like they were trying to read his mind. An undercurrent of tension gripped the room, a chill tinged by grief lingering in the air.

Andrew didn’t care. He wasn’t planning to stay. He turned to Bee and made eye-contact, trusting that he didn’t need to tell her that for her to know. 

“We’ll be in my study if you need me. Knock first.”

Bee’s study was a large room lined with picture windows. It occupied the back corner of the house, giving Andrew a view of the entire property. The backyard was more like a field, stretching on for hundreds of yards to the treeline. Bee settled into a chair much like the one in her office. She gestured for Andrew to take the loveseat opposite. Andrew sank into the plush furniture gratefully, his body hurting with exhaustion he couldn’t allow his mind to feel. 

“How long have you been out?”

“Three days,” and he hadn’t slept once. He didn’t have time to rest. He needed to find Aaron. “The facility shut down. Some men in store-bought army fatigues broke in and started taking kids. I got away.” 

Andrew declined to mention his means. He was still trying to wrap his head around the idea. Conjuring flame without spark or kindling was at home in the realms of science fiction, not Andrew’s life. He wouldn’t believe it if he heard it from Bee. Why should she believe him now?

“That sounds like a traumatic experience. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I came here for information,” Andrew said, “not therapy. I need to know what happened.” 

“I burned a CD,” Bee said. She went to the desk in the corner of the room and waved him over. It was a tower and monitor setup. “The computer is the only thing that works, other than the lights. No wifi, mind you. TV is useless. All broadcasting has disappeared. It’s like I’m a kid again, watching snow on the screen when the show was over.” 

Bee put a disc in the slot and pulled up the multimedia player. 

“I started recording the news when IAAN first became public. I thought it was going to be like SARS or Polio. So did the newscasters. Looking back, everything went downhill rather quickly. One of the boys spliced the interviews together in chronological order. For posterity.” 

Andrew took the chair and pressed play. 

_“A recent breakout of Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration has claimed the lives of a million children spanning the country in the space of a week. The medical industry is baffled by the cause and is currently not equipped to handle the sudden influx of the ill - and the dead.”_

_“Public services are overwhelmed --_

_“A hundred countries have signed a resolution to impose immediate sanctions on the United States as the origin of the disease known as IAAN, responsible for the deaths of 50 percent of the population under the age of twenty.”_

_“The stock market has crashed for the second time --_

_“Apologies viewers, your usual anchor has decided to take a leave of absence. In other news, the death toll has risen to a staggering 98%. As of today, schools stand empty, parks are deserted, and businesses are closed.”_

_“A recent rise in crime has been directly linked to IAAN sufferers —_

_“The CDC asks that the parents of any surviving children showing symptoms of IAAN bring their children to a designated safe zone so they can be brought in for treatment.”_

_A Cure is Possible._

“They replayed those last two messages on repeat for about a week before the news networks went off the air entirely. The internet service stopped a few days later. Cable and movie channels went with the first market crash. I’m lucky the banks are on lockdown, otherwise, I’d be in big trouble for having no way to pay the mortgage on this place.” 

“Everything’s gone.”

“Everything we would need, yes. The economy has collapsed entirely. Big business has pulled up stakes from coast to coast. The uber-rich have consolidated wealth and are living lavishly on some private island somewhere. The public service office and the CDC have been militarized. They grab surviving kids off the street and put them in internment camps. You eat what you can steal or grow yourself. You should stay here, Andrew. It’s not safe out there.”

“What happens to the kids that don’t go into camps?”

“They go into hiding,” Bee’s eyes were grave, “and pray not to be found. Andrew, these government men, they’re armed. They kill parents that don’t comply. It’s completely lawless out there.” 

Maybe just this once, the world was tipping in Andrew’s favor. 

“I have to go back. I have things to do.” 

“Whatever you need to do --

“I have to find my brother.”

“Andrew, it’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not worried,” Andrew said, “I can take care of myself.”

Andrew lit the logs in Bee’s fireplace, and that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello All! 
> 
> This was originally intended to be a single chapter, but the word count got away from me. There was so much to explain from Andrew's perspective in order to keep up chronologically with what Neil has learned so far. Everything that happened in this chapter occurred before Neil ran into the Monsters. The next chapter will also be from Andrew's perspective and will follow the timeline up until Neil and the Monsters go to Neil's contact. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has shown an interest in this story. I hope I didn't lose too many of you after Hernandez. I read your comments regularly and every single one is a reason to keep writing. 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Shtare


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second part of Andrew's journey.
> 
> TW: Verbal abuse and physical torture
> 
> Enjoy,

Andrew went back to Aaron’s house and started his search there. He created a system for gathering information by exploiting the existing system for his own gain. The government hired out civilian contractors as literal bounty hunters to capture kids that have escaped or otherwise avoided the camps. They had no hesitation in snatching kids right off the street. Being seen by a bounty hunter was a guaranteed one-way trip to an internment camp, or so Bee told him. 

For Andrew, this setup was convenient. He didn’t need to go looking for information, information came to him. 

Andrew started loitering in public places, standing around and waiting to be seen. Once he was sure he had someone on the hook, he would wander into an alley or the woods and wait. Inevitably, someone always came looking for the short guy. Even if Andrew were in his thirties, something told him that his small stature would have drawn the same level of attention from anyone looking to make some money off his hide. It was all too easy to overpower the people looking to take advantage of him. They would answer his questions or deal with the consequences. 

Without IAAN, that conversation would be much more easily resolved. 

As it was, the conversation went something like this: 

“Where do you take the kids?”

“Go fuck yourself, brat.” 

Andrew had to get creative. It was difficult to control but worth the effort. 

As it turns out, lighting a fire under someone ass got results. 

Andrew caught about a dozen people, all of them incompetent idiots that contradicted each other left and right. They were all willing to speak, though, under Andrew’s hands. He got a couple of tidbits, but nothing that mattered without essential context. 

“There’s a checkpoint, a processing center at the old mill yard. I don’t know what happens next. I’m just trying to survive, man, its this or the corner,” said a young woman who probably avoided contracting IAAN by the skin of her teeth. 

“They separate the kids and ship them to facilities out of state, I don’t know where. That’s all I know!” 

“I heard they take them out back and bury them in a shallow grave,” spat a man with a handlebar mustache and a denim vest. 

Every new asshole he got his hands on peddled a different story with the same ending. Whatever was happening to the kids, it wasn’t good, and Aaron was right in the middle of it. 

Andrew was quickly running out of time, and options. According to Bee, camps were popping up all over the country, more and more kids being plucked off the street and funneled into the endless meat-grinder of government internment. An entire generation reduced to prisoners in their own country. If Andrew wasn’t careful, he would be next. 

Unfortunately for Andrew, he attracted more attention than he was intending.

The next bounty hunter that found him was younger than the rest. Her hair was bleached pale with a couple of inches of root and a kaleidoscope of faded colors around the tips. She didn’t carry a weapon. Going by her stature, he could take her, but something about the way she carried herself warned Andrew to be cautious. 

“What’s your name?” She asked, keeping her distance and trying to lull Andrew into a false sense of security. There was something different about this one. She seemed smarter than the rest, a gleam in her eye as if she recognized Andrew’s trap and knew better than to get too close. 

Andrew didn’t reply, considering instead the best way to subdue her if she wouldn’t come within arm’s reach of him. The fire was unwieldy. If Andrew lost control, it would be like pointing a neon sign at himself, begging to be caught. 

“My name is Renee. Are you hungry?”

Renee pulled a plastic snack bag from her backpack and held it out to Andrew. When Andrew didn’t take it, she placed it on the ground and stepped away, far enough that she couldn’t grab him if he went for the bag. Andrew came forward slowly and picked up the junk food. There was no denying his hunger, or his dwindling supplies. 

“What do you want?”

There had to be a catch. No one was generous for generosity’s sake. Andrew waited for the other shoe to drop. 

“I need your help,” Renee said, a placid smile on her face, “I’ve been looking for kids that can hold their own. I’m trying to put together a team. A group of people that can look after themselves and each other. There is safety in numbers, you know?”

Safe is a relative term, and increasingly so since the calamity of IAAN. In this world, numbers meant drawing attention, and attention was a problem. Andrew was conspicuous enough by himself, he didn’t need any dead weight to drag around. Even in a perfect world, Andrew still would have said no. 

“Does that pitch work?” 

 

Andrew didn’t think so. Any kids stupid enough to believe a nice story were already in the camps. 

“Once or twice,” Renee said. 

“I’m not interested,” Andrew replied. He considered turning the tables, subduing her and getting the information he was looking for, but he had a feeling that he didn’t want to mess with this woman. For once, he wasn’t confident that he would win. “You can leave now.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Renee left, disappearing into the forest.

* * *

Andrew spent his evenings squatting in abandoned houses. He rotated every evening to avoid getting caught unawares by the very people he planned to trap. It was an easier living than he had known previously. He lived without any of the shackles that used to hold him down. Without any foster parents to abuse him, any mandatory education to occupy him, or any government agency waiting to transfer him to a new fresh hell, Andrew was almost enjoying himself. He had to move frequently to stay under the radar and keep himself fed. It was easy for him to boil stagnant water. Food was increasingly difficult to find, but it could be worse. Things were looking up, and as soon as he had Aaron at his side, Andrew would have everything he needed. 

Easier said than done. 

Andrew had been running his scam for a few months when he was found out, and not by bounty hunters. He was squatting in a neighborhood a mile or two from Aaron’s house, preparing a dinner of noodles when he heard glass shatter somewhere out of sight. 

Andrew got to his feet and pressed his back against the wall. He was in the living room of a two-story colonial, chosen for the sightlines in three different directions. Anyone trying to get the drop on him wouldn’t find him easy prey.

Footsteps approached, crunching over broken glass, getting closer. 

His palms started to simmer, the air around him growing charged with heat energy. Silence descended but Andrew could sense the tension of an axe about to fall. He preferred the reliability of the second move, but he didn’t know what he was dealing with here. His best bet was to strike -- 

An invisible force crushed Andrew into the wall, exerting pressure across every inch of his body. Andrew was pinned to the wall like a tacky painting, unable to move his arms or legs. The pressure was extreme, increasing until the drywall cracked underneath him. 

Andrew struggled in vain. 

A figure emerged from the front room, waltzing forward with a lackadaisical nonchalance of someone in complete control. The dying light of Andrew’s dinner threw the face of a young man in sharp relief as he crept toward an immobilized Andrew with the quiet malevolence of a predator. He was short, barely taller than Andrew. Two larger bodies stood in his shadow, one of them had an arm extended toward Andrew. He watched concentration wrinkle the stranger’s face. The nameless face was doing this to him. 

It looked like Andrew wasn’t the only freak in town. They would pay dearly for it. 

“You’ve been asking intrusive questions,” said the young man with pompous posture and a maniacal set to his features. He gestured to his lackey and the pressure let up on Andrew’s throat just enough for him to choke out some words. 

“Who are you?”

“Riko Moryiama, former pro Exy striker. Number one in the NCAA, Court pick, and professional athlete. You should watch more television.” Riko oozed arrogance and ignorance in equal measure. Andrew would have immediately disliked him had they met somewhere else. As it was, Andrew was considering the myriad and sundry ways to kill Riko slowly. 

“No much on these days,” Andrew said around gritted teeth, speaking painful. He was barely able to move his mouth, a sensation like the centrifugal force of a carnival ride pressing against every inch of his body, rendering him immobile. 

“You’ve been causing problems for me. Drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. The tracers are talking. Everyone is quite disturbed by the monster in the forest threatening to burn them alive,” Riko said with a sarcastic smile, “I have to admit, I like your style. There may be room for someone like you on my team.” 

Andrew wasn’t exactly a team player, and this guy was leaps and bounds sketchier than Renee. Was everyone starting up little clubhouses these days? 

“I’ll pass,” Andrew struggled to say

“Excuse me?”

Something told Andrew that Riko Moriyama wasn’t used to rejection. 

“No,” Andrew said, dumbing it down as much as possible for the brain trust. Riko’s face contorted with petulant rage. 

The power keeping Andrew suspended increased like a punch to the face. Andrew’s body broke through the wall and hit the ground in a spray of drywall dust. 

“I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Riko said. 

Andrew’s face was pinned to the floor like gravity was dialed up to a hundred. 

“Go fuck yourself,” Andrew said with herculean effort, the motions of his mouth pained like he was a step away from ripping his muscles apart. 

“I guess you don’t care about finding your brother, then? Aaron, right?”

Hearing Aaron’s name out of Riko’s mouth sent Andrew over the edge. Andrew wasn’t prepared for the emotional overload that hit him like a sledgehammer. The pulses of heat that permeated his body increased to a fever pitch that drowned out his ears with the sound of a roar -- 

And then there was screaming, the kind of high-pitched bloody murder kind of screaming that came from extreme pain. 

The pressure abated and Andrew leaped to his feet. He rounded on Riko, who watched apathetically has one of his men struggled to put out the fire clinging to his clothing. The hulking minion dropped to the ground and started rolling back and forth. His friend’s foot came down on him over and over, trying to stomp the flame out but only effectively kicking the guy while he was down. Andrew watched the nearly comical exchange with indifference. 

“Tell me what you know,” Andrew said to Riko, “or you’re next.” 

“Information isn’t all that hard to come by if you know where to look,” Riko said enigmatically, going for mysterious and ending up on the wrong side of irritating. 

A flame blazed to life in the palm of Andrew’s hand.

“Try again.”

Riko smiled a snake’s smile and acquiesced, holding his hands like a conductor to an orchestra as he told Andrew about the nearby camps. He explained the security measures, the intake procedure, and drop off locations. Andrew was immediately suspicious. Riko was no older than Andrew, how did he get the information without getting locked up in the process? None of the bounty hunters had this much knowledge, which meant Riko was getting his information from another source, higher up. 

“You should come with me, Andrew,” Riko said, “we could accomplish so much together.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I said _no.”_

“You want to come with me, Andrew,” Riko said, holding out his hand for Andrew to take. His eyes brightened in a flash. 

“I want to come with you,” Andrew said without intention. The words spilled from his mouth beyond his control. He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t stop himself. Andrew shook his head, trying to shake some clarity into his mind. A perverse feeling came over him, like a breeze on the back of his neck. A restlessness permeated his limbs but he couldn’t move. He strained for all he was worth and got nowhere. 

“Of course you do,” Riko crooned, “and you will.” 

Riko walked the few feet to Andrew and cupped his cheek in a hand. Riko’s hand was ice cold against Andrew’s flushed skin. Andrew felt an inexorable pull in Riko’s direction. Some urge that told him not to fight and threatened to carry him away like a buoy on a tide of blissful numbness. Andrew fought against the feeling with everything in him and couldn’t even twitch a finger. 

“You and I will do great things together, Andrew.” 

“We should kill him,” growled the guy that managed to extinguish himself. “We don’t need any more Reds.”

“Now, Gorilla, what have I told you about wasting resources?” 

Silent as death, Andrew watched a shadow creep up behind Riko. 

The figure that coalesced into a person Andrew vaguely recognized as Renee. She was completely silent as she walked, her feet carefully navigating broken glass without a sound. She was right behind Riko and his posse before they realized she was there. 

Renee kicked the singed guy in the side of the knee and followed the knee up with a right cross to the temple, knocking him out. The second goon went down with a punch to the throat. Riko got the full brunt of Renee’s right foot to the solar plexus. Riko fell and started gagging, clutching his chest and struggling for air with a heaving groan. 

Renee stepped over their bodies and gave Andrew a single nod. It was enough. Andrew blinked and a wall of flame exploded into being between them and Riko. The fire was fast and ravenous, consuming the curtains and catching on the carpet in the span of moments. Flames licked at the edges of Riko’s jacket, crawled up the side of his friend’s clothes. They scrambled to pat themselves out. Andrew used the distraction to hurtle his way out of the building and into the night, Renee on his heels. The fire was bright, spilling out onto the lawn in a wedge of illumination. 

“I’ll find you!” Riko screamed in the distance, “you can’t hide from me!” 

Andrew sprinted into the forest, Renee hot on his heels. Andrew didn’t have much time to decide what to do. Either he kills Renee now, before she could get the drop on him, or he makes the decision to trust her. Either way, he might end up dead for the bargain. 

Andrew runs, aware of Renee behind him as he makes his way to one of the abandoned houses a few neighborhoods over. He scoped the place out a week ago as his next hideout. Renee closed the door behind her. Andrew backed himself into a corner and paced like an angry cat. 

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Andrew said. 

“You’re welcome, Andrew. Don’t worry, I have no plan to hold this over your head.”

Too late. Andrew felt the spectre of a guillotine waiting to chop off his head in place of his debt. He didn’t like owing people. Renee’s placid smile screamed innocence but Andrew knew better than to be fooled. Renee was dangerous and she chose to save his life. She wanted something from him - a new member for her little team. 

“How did you find me?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” Renee hedged, “you haven’t been discrete.” 

“I have more important things to do.”

“I can’t help you unless you tell me what you need.”

Andrew didn’t trust her that much. 

“I’m looking for something,” Andrew said. 

“Something or someone?”

“Get out before I hurt you,” Andrew said, suddenly vulnerable. Once your weakness was known, you became victim to any number of manipulations. He wasn’t going to expose himself, and therefore Aaron, to the machinations of Renee’s mind. She watched him with knowing eyes and a sympathetic downturn to her lips. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Andrew. I hope you believe that, someday.”

Andrew wasn’t holding his breath.

* * *

Riko’s information turned out to be good. 

Andrew started with the camp closest to Aaron’s home. If Aaron was picked up by bounty hunters, he would have been brought to the nearest possible camp, or so logic dictated. The camp was called Caledonia. It was a repurposed school building surrounded by barbed wire fences and monitored with stadium-style light posts. Every corner had a manned booth monitoring the surrounding area. Overlapping, they had plenty of security to cover the school and the surrounding woods. Near a dozen guards with guns patrolled the perimeter of an electrified fence. 

Andrew couldn’t get within 100 yards of the facility without being seen. 

Andrew spent weeks scoping out the camp and learning what he could. Kids were bused in at irregular intervals and were only outside for a few minutes before they were hustled into the building for processing. 

The only way to get in was to get caught. 

The next time Andrew lured a bounty hunter into the dark, there was no monster waiting.

* * *

Aaron wasn’t in Caledonia. 

The facility was run much in the same way as juvenile detention, except instead of cells, kids were packed into classrooms, so many that no one could lie down. They were fed bowls of cold oatmeal once a day and there was barely enough water to keep them on the better side of dehydration. Hygiene privileges were virtually nonexistent. Bathroom access was severely restricted to the point that a corner was appointed for relieving oneself. Fights broke out left and right until they didn’t, everyone too weak and tired to bother. Guards patrolled the halls day and night, armed with handguns and in some cases, rifles. They chatted as they walked their patrols, ambling down the hall like they were at work, which they were. He wondered how they cashed a paycheck in a country where money was meaningless. 

Andrew knew the outside patrol schedule from meticulous observation and it took a day for him to get the indoor patrol routes. 

The last person Andrew expected to see walking the halls of Caledonia was Renee. She wore their black and white uniform, complete with gun belt and flak vest. She didn’t make eye contact as she walked by on an evening patrol, but Andrew knew she had seen him. 

Andrew didn’t get a chance to talk to her until the boys were escorted to their weekly showers, which amounted to getting hosed-down in the back lot, fully clothed. 

Renee lingered at the back of the group. 

Andrew let himself drift until he was walking beside her. 

“He’s not here,” Andrew said. 

“I could have told you that,” Renee replied, “if you were willing to trust me.” 

“I’m willing to trust you now,” Andrew said, out of options.

“I don’t know what I can do at this point.”

“I need to know when security is at its weakest. Least number of personnel on-site.”

“Even if the guards weren’t twenty-four-seven, the entire place runs on a grid, you won’t be able to get past the fences.” 

“Leave that to me.”

Kevin Day arrived with little fanfare, remarkably less than he was used to, going by his noxious entitlement and expensive clothing. He was a Yellow, and exactly the tool Andrew needed to take down the fences escape. Kevin’s level of anxiety was annoying, as was his perpetual static charge. Andrew got a jolt every time they brushed up against each other. Kevin’s major downfall was his attitude. He didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut and he managed to piss of almost everyone he talked to. Andrew regretted taking Kevin Day under his wing, mostly because he was a royal pain in the ass. If Andrew didn’t need him, he would have dropped him like a hot potato. As it was, Andrew made a deal with him and hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass. 

It took three months to get everything into place. Andrew needed to convince the older Blues to help. They wouldn’t get far without some muscle. Renee was working on ingratiating herself to earn the trust of the camp foreman in order to gain access to the emergency override procedures. A contingency for the fence if Kevin failed to pull his weight. 

The plan came together quickly after that. When the day to break out finally came, Renee had something special for him. 

“Aaron Minyard was registered at the Fort Worth facility in Texas.” 

Andrew was blindsided and he hated that feeling. What the actual fuck was Aaron doing in Texas? His last letter declined to mention an impromptu move to a different state. The first thing Andrew is going to do when he finds his brother is wring his neck. 

Andrew set the plan in motion after Renee dropped that little tidbit. She also provided him with a comprehensive shift schedule, a set of blueprints, and the camp emergency response procedure taught to every employee in the event of an _event_. It was everything Andrew needed. The hardest part was getting the rest of the captives on board. Some of them were too young to understand and the rest were too jaded to listen. Organizing a hundred teenagers was a seemingly impossible venture. 

“Why should we trust you?” Asked Jeremy. He was the elected representative of the Blues over eighteen asked the same question over and over again, in one form or another. 

“You want to get out, right?” Jeremy would look down, askance, “you don’t have to trust me, you just have to want it,” Andrew would say to him, deadpan and entirely serious about the possibility of their deaths. It was hard going. No one wanted to challenge the status quo. They’d been hosed down one too many times. Learned helplessness. Andrew was going to get out of Caledonia one way or another, with or without their help.

* * *

The plan came together one dark evening. 

Andrew, Kevin, and the rest were locked in a room stripped of everything, including the blinds. There was nothing to do but stare aimlessly out of the grimy windows. Andrew wasn’t looking, he had long since memorized the patrols. 

He heard the shot. 

The kids that were watching cried out in shock and alarm, and they immediately started to whisper about the _Orange._ A kid brought in by bus who refused to step into line. Possessed of so much power, one of the guards shot themselves in the head without him saying a word. 

He got the same treatment.

The teenagers were a lot more willing to go along with Andrew’s plan when they realized the fate awaiting them. Jeremy was the one that ultimately convinced him but Andrew didn’t have time to be properly grateful. 

The plan was almost uncomfortably simple. If everyone moved at once, they would be able to overpower the night shift guards. Kevin would short out the fence, and if push came to shove, Andrew would take care of the guards. A handful of Blues, like Riko’s lackey, would get the nullified gate open and everyone would run for their lives. If there were cars to be found, those that could drive would get away as many as they could. The rest would disappear to the best of their ability. Many of them would be caught again and sent back from the camps. Andrew knew that and accepted it. He couldn’t protect everyone and these kids were not his responsibility. All Andrew needed to do was set off the fire alarm.

It was all too easy to climb onto an old lab table and hold a concentrated flame up to the sensor. The alarm that went off was a klaxon blare with accompanying flashing lights. At first, nobody moved. Everyone just stared. Maybe they needed a little incentive to save themselves. Sheep need a sheepdog. 

“Get out!” Andrew released a torrent of flame over their heads, bowing out the windows in the process. After that, it was a stampede. Andrew watched the tide part around Kevin as a couple dozen bodies surged through the door. They would have no trouble getting out the front. Procedure dictated that all camp personnel were required to muster at the south end of the camp in the case of fire. When the room was empty, Andrew grabbed Kevin’s arm and threw him forward, “Run.” Kevin fell in his haste to comply, lurching to his feet and out the double doors. Andrew walked, drawing a single finger along the wall as he went.

Behind him, the building burned. 

It was easy to take the gate. Andrew was used to getting his hands dirty. Those guards were the first he’s killed outright, but they were otherwise insignificant. Andrew contented himself with being a killer after Drake. He regretted leaving him alive. He should have killed him the moment Aaron’s name left his lips. Andrew beat him half to death to avoid life in prison, but if this was going to be the outcome, he would have been better off putting Drake in the dirt. He was going to pay attention to how long it takes to burn someone to death, just what the fire was capable of. Andrew knew what he was willing to do to make good on a deal. Hell and back was the least of it. 

Andrew went back for Renee because he owed her. He realized something was wrong when she didn’t show up at the rendezvous point. Meeting at the fence was her idea and in her position, she should have beaten them to the gate. Something must have happened to her. Leaving Kevin at the gate was an easy decision, he could take care of himself for a little while, at least. Long enough for Andrew to get Renee and get clear. 

If she wasn’t here, she must be with the rest of her people. Andrew started running to the south camp. He exercised his limits as he went, watching the way the fire responded. It started in his hands, shooting a concentrated steam of fire from the palm to the closest building. Something about the flame was an accelerant into itself, burning faster and hotter than expected. Andrew ignited the roof of the schoolhouse with a gesture, the flames coming to life from ten yards away. A glance was plenty to detonate the armory in an explosion that shook the ground. 

Kids too afraid to move were huddled on the ground in small clusters, pressed against the side of the buildings, hands over their ears, desperate to block out the chaos unfolding in front of their eyes. The few guards Andrew saw were otherwise occupied, running past half-escaped inmates in their hurry, some running to extinguish the fire, others escaping on their own behalf. Andrew smirked. 

The diehards, like those at the gate, were swarmed at the protocol stipulated location, trying to organize their personnel into some semblance of a fighting force that could recapture their escaped captives. 

Renee was among them, held at gunpoint. 

The guy with the gun wore the same uniform, but going by the way the guards around him quailed under his attention, he was the superior officer, and he figured out what they were trying to do. He was yelling at the dozen guards clustered around him. 

“Clear the fences! If they run, shoot them,” he barked to his men, “if they surrender, shoot them.”

Only a couple of his men hesitated before sounding off, “yessir!” 

Andrew zeroed his focus in on the gun pointing at Renee and a split second later - it exploded - along with the man’s arm. He went down screaming. His remaining troops scattered in the breeze. 

Andrew ran to the edge of the facility, Renee by his side. 

Andrew threaded his fingers through the chainlink fence and channeled all of his pent up frustration into his hands. The metal heated up, glowing orange and melting between his fingers. 

Renee followed Andrew into the woods. It would be easy to swing around to the front and pick up Kevin before he wandered off. 

“Not so fast.”

Andrew’s knees locked up on him and he went down, practically bouncing off the forest floor. He looked up to find none other than Riko standing over him. 

“I have plans for you.” 

Darkness descended and Andrew knew nothing else.

* * *

Andrew woke up when someone threw a bucket of cold water in his face. He came - to sputtering, trying to blink around the water dripping down his face. He was freezing, naked, and tied to a metal chair. His arms were bound tightly behind his back with metal restraints, each two inches thick and nearly tight enough to cut off blood supply. Andrew tried to move his legs and found the same bindings keeping his legs flush with the chair legs, each lock spaced out to cover every joint, keeping him completely immobilized. His lap and chest were stapped into what felt like a seatbelt. A short struggle proved the chair was bolted to the floor. 

Andrew breathed deeply and tried not to panic. 

He needed to take account of resources. 

There was nothing but darkness around him. He was being held someone without lights, or with the lights turned off. It felt like a wide space. Andrew couldn’t make out any corners of shades of furniture even after his eyes adjusted. The room was completely empty except for him and his chair. It smelled dank and felt wet. 

The grind of rust metal hinges being opened pierced the silence. Andrew watched the overall light balance of the room brightened by the sliver cut out beyond his sight. 

Footsteps, coming closer. 

Andrew thrashed in the chair and got absolutely nowhere, and nothing save for chafing. 

The voice attached to the feet chuckled and Andrew jumped. The voice was close enough to touch. The hair on the back of Andrew’s neck stood up, the sensation preceding the hot hair that blew against his neck. The breath of someone, a man, leaning over his shoulder.

The man cleared his throat and then spoke. 

“Andrew, your name was Andrew, right? It says so in your criminal file, right next to your picture. You look very mean,” he said mockingly, “with your dyed black hair and your goth outfit. That’s what kids used to call it right, goth?” 

Andrew was afforded a few seconds of silence to be unimpressed. 

“You disgust me you know. Not because you survived, but because you threw your life away when the world was perfect. You destroyed the world for everybody. You can fucking die on your way to get groceries because someone will kill you over the last can of refried beans. How insane is that? What’s even crazier is that they let you live at all. There should be a one-strike rule. If you’re violent, that’s it, game over. Instead, we put you in kiddie prison so you can grow up to kill more good men and women,” The hidden man said. 

Andrew didn’t reply. It seemed more like a soliloquy moment. 

“Do you know what you are? A monster. Inhuman and evil, you will destroy everything you love because you just can’t help yourself. It is in your nature to hurt others. Everyone that matters to you, everyone you’ve ever met, will die, because of you.” 

Then he left, easy as that. 

Andrew was left confused and more than a little irritated. 

It was the first time Andrew heard the voice, but it was far from the last. 

Andrew didn’t have a great sense of time, but he knew at least a few hours passed before the door to his room opened again. This time, the man was accompanied by others - too many for Andrew to count. They crowded around his chair and chatted like he was the office water cooler. 

They gave him water, three times a day and only a few mouthfuls. They fed him nothing and watched as he lost muscle mass. They counted his ribs like a game and laughed. They spit on him and pissed in his hands. He was doused in cold water more than once and was the lucky recipient of an inept attempt at waterboarding. Mostly, they bent his head back and splashed water in his face. Andrew collected a mouthful of water. Instead of drinking it, like he should have, he spit it out in a spray and hoped to hit as many targets as possible. 

He was beaten unconscious for that one. 

It continued.

When Andrew was visited, they talked about a lot of things. 

_“You’re a monster.”_

_“You are abhorrent.”_

_“You are nothing.”_

Andrew had no concept of time. 

They degraded him without mercy. He didn’t hear most of it. 

The threats were endless and most of the promised suffering came to pass. 

They tried to unmake Andrew as a person. 

He resisted. He took the pain without a word. He couldn't keep his body from trembling with shock and contorting to avoid the blows, but he did not give them the pleasure of witnessing his suffering. He gave no indication of his awareness other than the grimace that contorted his face. He refused to acknowledge their presence despite their hands all over his body. 

Whoever was doing this to him was an organization of some kind. One sick pervert couldn’t pull that many accomplices into their sphere of influence. Unless he was kidnapped by a cult of sadists, someone was paying these men to mold him. 

He didn’t answer their questions. He did not react to their insults.

Andrew broke before long. The words were accompanied by electric shocks that traveled through his body, punctuating every belief they were trying to drive into him. 

He was broken, and they were fixing him. 

He was wrong, and they told him how to be right. 

He was a monster, and they could make good use of his perverse nature. 

Unfortunately for them, Andrew already knew these things about himself. Couldn’t drag a man to rock bottom when he lived his whole life in the gutter. 

Andrew was burning from the inside out. They told him that the only way to survive the fire that threatened to consume him was to turn it over to them. To obey their every whim. To burn what they wanted him to burn - who they wanted him to burn. 

Andrew lived with plenty of abusers. He knew when he was being manipulated - so he let it happen. Eventually, it would give him an opening. 

Ultimately, he got one. 

Andrew didn’t know how long he was in the cell when the environment changed. 

Andrew’s body stopped feeling like his own long ago. 

The lights came on and Andrew was blinded. They left him there, with spots clawing in his vision, for a long time. Eventually, Andrew’s eyes adjusted and he took in the blank walls of painted - over metal. The floor was the same as the walls. Andrew was in a completely metal room, empty but for his chair. He must be on a boat. Or in a storm cellar. Or a specially designed room where there was nothing to burn. 

Andrew spent a long time thinking about the correction officer he killed with the sheer force of his rage. The fire was hotter than it should have been and consumed both flesh and paper to ash. It burned without kindling 

They toted a series of people through Andrew’s prison, men and women they said were criminals deserving of a painful end. They wanted Andrew to be their executioner. They were brought to him naked and shivering. Andrew knew his cell was cold, but he didn’t feel it. All Andrew was aware of was the sensation of being burned alive. A heat that started in his stomach, searing his insides out, spreading to his limbs, engulfing his entire body. Sweat poured from his pores, only to evaporate on contact with his skin.

They wanted him to make these people burn too. 

Andrew couldn’t escape his misery, but he refused to spread it around. 

They didn’t like that. 

It got worse from there. 

The pain Andrew refused to visit on others was taken out on him tenfold. 

Andrew wouldn’t call it torture, because he’s had worse. At least they were beating him with batons instead of shoving one up his ass. At least they were punching him instead of taking knives and rendering him open. 

Turns out, the baton was a cattle prod. 

They loved electricity. Every so often, a man came into Andrew’s room. He would tug a tight silicone cap onto Andrew’s head and attached electrodes to the cap until Andrew was covered in wires. 

More electricity. 

More poisonous words poured into Andrew’s head like mercury, eating away at his sense of self. His memories. His ability to connect with reality. His awareness was starting to blur around the edges. His periods of consciousness were becoming shorter and shorter. The pain became all-consuming, distracting him from the burning inside. 

He was losing his ability to resist their commands.

There were others there. Andrew couldn’t see them but he could hear their screams. After a while, it grew quiet, until Andrew could hear no voices other than his own and those of the people that owned him. 

The pain was constant. No break, no letting up, no delay. A constant inundation of stimuli sending tidal waves of agony over his body, beating him on the rock of his own flesh and blood. They brought him to the edge of blacking out from the pain and hovered there, waiting to see how long he could stand it before his mind just gave out. 

Anything to make the pain go away. Anything to unmake his loathsome self cell by cell, cast into the wind to scatter and disappear. 

He was going to burn alive from the inside out. 

With nothing else to do, Andrew fell back on the coping mechanism Bee was hesitant to teach him. Without discipline, it could do serious damage, leaving Andrew to wander the horror house of his worst experiences and most vivid nightmares. 

Andrew was nothing if not controlled. 

He retreated into his mind palace, to the place where he felt most in control, and let everything else fade away.

* * *

When Andrew woke up, he was on the roof of the first group home he ever lived in, a converted office building. It was concrete covered in rocks, nothing but an H-Vac system and the door back downstairs that Andrew jammed with a rock. It was the first place Andrew ever felt safe. 

He was sitting on the ledge, his feet dangling over the edge, looking out to an expansive cloudy sky. And below, a vast nothingness. 

Andrew leaned back and puffed on his cigarette.

Nothing to do but enjoy the view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew's time in Caledonia is deliberately vague because most of that time is covered in flashback sequences that have happened and will happen in the future. I CHose to do it this way as a method of emphasizing Neil's mind meld abilities. Next chapter will see Neil and the gang meeting up with Neil's contact and finding an unexpected obstacle. If it wasn't clear, Andrew's last location is East Haven, after Riko captures him outside of Caledonia. 
> 
> I'm not proud of this one. I've been losing faith in my writing lately. I'm not sure when the next chapter will come out, but I am committed to finishing this fic come hell or high water so even if I'm unsatisfied with it, it'll exist. Sorry to be a bummer. 
> 
> A big thank you to all of my readers, drop a comment if you want to brighten my day.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Shtare


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil meets some new friends. 
> 
> Enjoy,

The four of them became hyper-focused on Andrew after Neil disposed of Kathy. Without anywhere to go back to, it was easy to leave Arizona and venture into the wild forests of Colorado. 

They didn’t talk about what happened to Hernandez, but the knowledge hung heavy in the air between them. Nicky was uncharacteristically quiet, no longer filling the void with jokes in poor taste. Aaron brooded silently instead of complaining loudly. Kevin walked around with a terminal sense of guilt that radiated from him like a bad smell and he followed at Neil’s heel like he was magnetized. Neil wasn’t bothered. He was jumpy after Kathy caught him off guard and having Kevin close was better than having to chase after him. 

Neil was walking on eggshells, waiting for someone to comment on the elephant in the van, so to speak. It wasn’t every day you discovered your new friend could invade your mind with a touch. They should be terrified, running for their lives, and instead, they were acting as if nothing happened. 

Whether it was out of respect for his privacy or self-preservation was debatable. 

They were acting like Neil hadn’t been exposed as an Orange. 

Neil highly doubted that their silence was for his benefit. 

Then again, no one was talking about Andrew being a Red, except for Aaron, who seemed able to focus on nothing else. 

“Don’t you know anything else about East Haven?”

“Nothing,” Neil promised, not lying for once, “I don’t know anything else.” 

Neil wished he knew more - that he had paid closer attention to the broadcasts Mom had dangled on the edge of every time the static cleared on the radio. He didn’t know the vast majority of her contacts because he never asked and she never volunteered the information.

Neil wanted to help them - to help Andrew. Neil was living on borrowed time and he wanted to do something good with it. He wanted to make up for the evil things he’s done. The lives he’s taken. The world went to shit and Neil started killing - but not Andrew. Andrew saw the end of the world and decided to help people, to protect Kevin, to find his family. Good things across the board, better than any Neil had ever known. He wanted to meet the person that lived to preserve life instead of taking it, the person willing to sacrifice themselves for someone else.

They rode in stifling silence towards the last known location of Mom’s contact. They arrive at an ancient apartment complex after the second day of driving. It’s the evening and getting darker. 

Neil goes to meet his contact - alone - because every last one of them was useless at stealth of any kind.

The last known whereabouts of Mom’s contact was a dilapidated building along Arizona’s northern border. Mom and Neil had stopped by there to pick up new IDs on their way to California. The place looked cleared out but Neil knew from experience that appearances can be deceiving. Neil palmed his gun just in case. He only had one bullet left and had no intention of using it, but there was no underestimating the intimidation factor. Most people were put off by guns, uncomfortable at the idea of staring death in the face. Neil was all too used to it, it was almost like he could sense it in the oncoming moments. There was something latent in the shadowed wooden staircase, the panels squeaking with age and ominous intent. Neil scaled the stairs to the second floor and found apartment number nine. The contact was meant to be a middle-aged woman with dark hair and glasses. 

Neil knocked. 

The door blew wide open. 

Neil was pulled right off his feet and plunged headlong into the apartment. His hands flew up, bracing to be thrown headlong out the window opposite the door. Instead of defenestration, Neil was pinned to the ceiling, all four limbs stretched out like he was being drawn and quartered. An invisible force held him with enough weight to knock the air right out of his chest. The popcorn staccato of the ceiling dug into the back of his head. His blood rushed in his ears, blocking out everything but the rapid beat of his heart. 

A Blue was here - definitely not his contact. 

Three figures stood beneath him, looking up at Neil from his perspective. One of them, the Blue, had a hand raised to focus his energy on restraining Neil against the will of gravity. The three of them were wearing masks but Neil could make out two women and a man. 

“How did you find us?”

“I’m not looking for you,” Neil managed to say, “you’re not supposed to be here.” 

“He’s lying, he was sent here,” said the woman in a blue hooded sweatshirt, “dust him, Jer!”

“Hold on, we can’t just kill him,” said the other woman with that Latin accent, “we should let him down and question him.”

“Tie him up,” agreed the Blue. His powers were so finely tuned he was able to manipulate Neil’s paralyzed body into a hastily placed dining chair and hold him there while the others fetched duct tape. It was power, unlike anything Neil had encountered up to this point. And to think, he had been impressed by Aaron’s display with Kathy’s car. Whoever this Blue was, they were on an entirely different level. 

Neil couldn’t catch a break.

* * *

Nicky was getting bored. There was only so much to do in a moving car. He blew through his last crossword booklet and no one was willing to play mad Libs with him anymore. 

“Neil is taking an awfully long time,” Nicky mused, “should we be worried?” 

“He can take care of himself,” Aaron said from the loft of the RV they scrounged up a few days back. He spent a lot of his time in bed after losing Katelyn and her parents. Aaron and Nicky thought of them as a second family and to lose them all in such a terrible way made Nicky cry himself to sleep. 

“He’ll be fine,” Kevin said, petulantly angry about something Neil said before he left, about why Kevin couldn’t come along. Kevin was a pretty sensitive guy and high maintenance in a diva sort of way. Nicky has wondered endlessly about Kevin’s gender identity and sexual preferences. That train of thought quickly turned dark. What started out as curiosity ended sadly when thinking of sex inevitably lead to thinking of Eric. Charming, gallant, wonderful Eric.

Nicky could fantasize about Eric for hours. It was the small moments he remembered the most, 

That first day getting off the plane. Eric took one look at Nicky’s face and bundled him up in the biggest bear hug he’d ever gotten in the whole of his miserable life. Eric was huge and warm and muscly and Nicky melted into his arms. He doesn’t remember how long they stayed there, wrapped up in each other, Eric gently swaying them back and forth, running a gentle hand through Nicky’s hair and telling him in german _everything is alright, you’re home now, Nicholas._

The weekend they spent in Belgium on school break, the tiny room they rented with the big bed and the amazing view. All the places they intended to sightsee but never did because they spent the whole weekend wrapped up in each other, all rumpled bed sheets and chocolate truffles. 

The first time they said goodbye when Nicky’s study abroad was over and he needed to return to America. Eric cupped Nicky’s face in his hands and kissed him long and deep. 

_don’t be afraid, Nicholas. I’ll be with you._

And Eric was there with Nicky, always, as the warmth in his heart and the smile on his face. It’s not the same as Eric really being there though. The grief of his absence was a black hole in the center of his chest that threatened to suck him into the void. It was a constant battle to put on a happy face, to be optimistic, when he didn’t even know if Eric was still alive. 

“Are we sure Neil doesn’t need any help?”

“Shut up, Nicky,” Aaron and Kevin said in tandem.

* * *

Neil was fine, or as fine as he could be tied to a chair and at the mercy of three enhanced individuals of unknown character and intentions. 

They were standing out of Neil’s earshot in a tight huddle, subtly arguing about what to do with him whilst leaving him duct-taped to a chair. Clearly, they were undecided. They tape his mouth, so Neil took full advantage of their distraction. Whoever these people were, they were no professionals. His father’s people would never show divisions or insubordination in front of a victim. Whoever they were, they were divided, and Neil was going to make himself the wedge that drove them apart. It was his only way out of this situation alive, as agonizing as his life was. He needed to find Andrew and these people were wasting his time. 

“Seriously?” Neil called out to the three of them, “you’re going to leave me sitting here, tied to a chair, while you work out the best way to torture me right in front of me?”

They duct-taped his mouth after that one. If this was an interrogation, he was dealing with amateurs.

It was a mistake to try to reach out to this contact. With the way everything had fallen apart, there was no way the woman was still there. Neil was foolish to think it could be so easy to find East Haven - to save Andrew. 

Neil was slightly less than fine. 

Neil had done a lot of condemnable things recently.

Neil made a terrible mistake and there was no way to go back in time and fix it. Hernandez was gone, just like Mom. Getting rid of Kathy meant nothing to Hernandez. Marlene would be a different person, who he made her to be rather than the woman’s warped solely by grief. 

He hoped that she found some peace. 

Neil didn't know what Katelyn would do. He hoped she would maintain the garden. Hernandez was so proud of his garden, and his ability to provide enough food for his family to live on. Neil remembered the way Hernandez smiled in the sunset light, only just last week, as he explained the proper way to reseed a potato. 

Neil’s time at the Hernadez’s seemed like a lifetime ago. 

Almost as long as it took his captors to finish deliberating. The Blue strode up to Neil, spinning another chair, straddling the seat and leaning forward to rest his arms over the backrest. 

“Okay, so this is how this is going to work, I’m going to ask questions and you’re going to answer them, ok?” Said the Blue. He pulled off his mask and Neil was greeted by the glowing complexion of a Californian coast native, all bright hair and tanned skin. 

“But first, introductions. I’m Jeremy, that's Laila,” he said, pointing to the one who opted to kill Neil, “and Alvarez,” who removed her mask, sporting a grin that seemed out of place in the situation. 

“I don’t care who the hell are you people and what are you doing here,” Neil said, “just let me go and we can all walk away from this.” He was not going to be a passive participant in his own torture, if one of them got close enough, Neil would take them over. The last thing Neil wanted was to be in anyone else’s head after Hernandez, but anything goes when it comes to saving his own life. He hated the idea of stripping the mind of yet another person but he may not have any other choice. He was used to that. 

“You’re not in a position to be asking questions,” said Laila said, fearsome and angry. She seemed like the kind of woman who could lay Neil out flat with one punch. 

Neil could get what he wanted from Laila if he really tried. She was too far away to touch, but something happened at the Hernandez house, hadn't it? Something unlike anything he had done before. He could just reach out -- 

“Who sent you here?” Jeremy asked, beginning the torture without any hands-on accompaniment. Neil appreciated the restraint enough to answer his question.

“No one. I came here looking for someone who is obviously long gone, so if you just let me go, we can all walk out of here,” Neil offered. He was willing to be magnanimous if they untied him right then and there. 

“Why were you looking for that person?”

Neil was not the kind to volunteer sensitive information. The knowledge of his identity and abilities were closely guarded for the damage they could do to him and anyone in his vicinity. Andrew’s secrets, however, we neither Neil’s problem nor his responsibility. Hell, they might know something about the place Neil was looking for. 

“I’m looking for information on East Haven,” Neil said, “it’s a facility —

“Facility for Reds,” Jeremy interrupted, “I know the place. Top-notch security, towers, guns, dogs, the works. Not much to know about East Haven other than to avoid it at all costs.”

“Someone I know was taken there and I need to find them,” Neil said, emphasizing the emotional upheaval in the hopes that they were bleeding-hearts that would appreciate his apparent vulnerability. 

Sure enough, Jeremy’s face changed from stern to kind, his features melting into a look of empathetic upset. Alvarez’s crossed arms fell open and she started pacing back and forth in front of Neil’s chair. Her arms came up behind her neck and she leaned back, looking up at the ceiling and sighing. Laila seemed unmoved, but there was a subtle softening in her eyes. 

These people weren’t dangerous. They were probably camp escapees looking for somewhere to squat and by some fluke of the universe, they chose the same apartment of Mom’s former contact. Neil entertained the possibility that he might get out of there unscathed. 

“Assuming I believe you,” Jeremy said, “how do I know I can trust you? There are some dangerous people out there. Enemies that pretend to be friends. People that use this world to take advantage of others. How do I know you’re not one of those people?”

“I’m alone and tied to a chair. If I could do anything, I would have done it by now. I need to know what you know about East Haven. Someone’s life depends on it.”

“Someone’s life always depends on it,” said Laila, “for all we know, our lives could depend on not letting you go.”

“That’s a pessimistic way to view the situation,” Alvarez said, “there must be some good people left in the world, right? Come on, guys, we have to trust somebody if we’re going to get home.”

The three of them went back to talking to each other and ignoring Neil. Neil let their imaginations go for a beat before he cut in.

“I can give you a ride, if you need one,” Neil offered. Kevin, Nicky and Aaron could take a detour to bring these guys home and Neil could pump them for information along the way. A good deal, everyone’s happy.

It took ten more minutes of arguing, with Neil still tied to a chair, for them to agree. And then they were untying Neil’s bonds, just like that.

Neil rubbed his irritated wrists as he led the trio out of the building and around the back. Neil was grateful they found such a huge RV to make the trip. Everyone could fit without having to get too close. Neil’s long sleeves could only do so much to prevent skin to skin contact when in tight quarters. The RV gave them a little bit of room to stretch. 

Neil knocked and waited for Nicky to spring down the steps and open the door.

“Neil!” As ever, Nicky is inordinately glad to see Neil and it is such a strange sensation, to have someone be so plainly delighted by Neil’s presence alone. No one had ever looked at Neil like that before. Nicky was a difficult friend to have. 

Nicky’s face went from happy to suspicious when he noticed Neil’s hangers-on. 

“Who are your new friends?”

A thud came from behind Nicky, the sound of feet hitting the floor. Kevin and Aaron filled the space on either side of Nicky’s head, looking for a moment like a fearsome three-headed human chimera fully capable of eating Neil alive. 

“Jeremy Knox?” 

Kevin pushed passed Nicky’s shoulder and out of the RV, heading for the Blue that kept Neil captive. He got close and held out a hand.

“Kevin Day,” Jeremy said, like it was a revelation, “where the hell have you been, buddy?”

Jeremy forgoes Kevin’s offered handshake in favor of a hug. It's enough to convince the girls, who have no problem pushing Aaron down the stairs in order to get into the RV. They were strange and confusing, but Neil could grow to like them.

Nicky winked at Neil and returned to the driver’s seat. Aaron stomped back up the steep RV steps, probably to hide in the loft. Kevin and Jeremy are stuck in conversation, going back and forth so fast it was difficult for Neil to keep track, as obsessed with Exy as he was. It was mostly a garble of stats and Court prospects. Neil had to physically push the pair of them into the van, neither breaking a stride and Neil coaxed them up the stairs and into the round bench that encircled the table set into the side of the RV. Sure enough, Aaron was in his loft. Laila claimed the captain's chair directly behind Nicky and seemed to be talking to him. Alvarez was nowhere to be seen, but the door to the bedroom was closed, so he could imagine that she found the bed. It was luxurious living for most of them. Neil took the passenger’s seat. Laila got up when he sat down and retreated into the bedroom. 

Nicky turned the ignition on the bus and flashed Neil a sunny smile. “I’m glad you found them, Neil, and convinced them to come with us. You have this way with people that's super subtle and hella powerful. Has anyone ever told you that?” 

“No,” Neil said. 

“Well,” Nicky said, “you do. You’re special, Neil.”

Special is just another word for freak. Neil shuddered to think what his father would do with Neil’s cursed abilities. It was the stuff of Neil’s nightmares, the evil his father would be capable of if he could do what Neil can do. 

He wondered how Andrew would handle being a living weapon. Except he didn’t have to, because Andrew was the same as him. Ingrained with death and doomed to kill. Except Andrew found some way to rise above it. From what Neil knows of Andrew, he has only used what he could do for the good of others. 

“She told you where to go?”

“Yup,” Nicky chirped, “White River mountains in Colorado. Will probably take us half a day to get there. I’m already on my way!”

Nicky pulled out onto the main road and started driving. It was getting dark. 

“Keep the headlights off.”

“What? Do you want to die?”

“No one is on the road except people that want to kill us,” Neil said, “just drive slowly.” 

Neil left Nicky’s complaints behind to join Kevin and Jeremy at the table. Kevin looked relaxed, almost blissed out to be talking to Jeremy, who had a bright smile on his face and talked incessantly, reaching out often to grab Kevin’s arm. They didn’t react when Neil sat down. 

“I think you know something about East Haven,” Neil said to Jeremy. 

The magic words brought Aaron thundering down from the loft and almost onto Jeremy’s head. Aaron was rumpled with sleep and cut an under intimidating figure in his boxers.

“What do you know about East Haven?” Aaron went to grab Jeremy’s jacket but Jeremy reacted before he could, shoving his back with a forceful blow to the stomach. His hand never connected with Aaron’s stomach but Aaron flew back as if he had. Aaron ended up on the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said, going out of his way to help Aaron to his feet. Aaron was humiliated and entirely ungrateful, ripping his arm out of Jeremy’s hand. Aaron retaliated, throwing his own Blue-charged punch that Jeremy ducked under. Neil intervened, grabbed Aaron around the waist and pulled him back. Neil got an elbow to the eye for the trouble. 

Jeremy didn’t look angry, he seemed grudgingly respectful of Aaron for some reason. 

“It’s good to see you too, Andrew,” Jeremy said. 

It was like a bomb went off in the RV. Aaron visibly reacted, nearly scaring out of his skin. Kevin shot to his feet and Nicky’s shocked gasp could be heard RV wide. 

“You know Andrew?” Aaron was blatantly hopeful and it was the first time Neil saw his face as anything but angry. He didn’t know what to do with the information. 

“You trying to tell me you don’t?”

“I’m his twin brother.”

“Oof,” The Jeremy winced, “you have my sympathies.”

“Do you know anything at all?” Neil asked, cutting into the unnecessary drama before Aaron could take Jeremy’s head off. 

Andrew was the reason they were here, anything else was an unaffordable distraction. 

“Sorry, friend, we don’t. But we know someone who might,” Jeremy offered, “you want to talk to Betsy. Just about every kid who manages to escape cycles through her place at one point or another. Andrew might have stopped there.”

Neil still got the feeling that Jeremy was hiding something behind his wide, toothy smile. Laila and Alvarez were currently out of his reach, but Neil had every intention of questioning them when the morning rolled around. 

“So let's go there!” Aaron looked at Neil like he had done something wrong. 

“We’re already on our way,” Jeremy said, “and you are?”

“Aaron.”

“Nice to meet you, Aaron.” 

Neil was amazed and more than a little suspicious. The idea of a safe haven for escaped kids was too good to be true and Neil knew better than to believe such things. On any other day, Neil would have turned around. This time he was willing to see it through. Neil was living on borrowed time as it was, and he wanted to reunite the Minyard brothers before his father’s people found him. Neil could feel his father’s people closing in on him, like a breath at the back of his neck. He had nothing to live for except finding Andrew, so he was going to do whatever it takes, including walking headfirst into a probable trap.

With their destination established, everyone was able to occupy the same space without violence. 

Neil sat at the table with Jeremy, Kevin, and Aaron in silence. Nicky sang to himself in the front seat, fiddling with the radio dial out of habit.

“How did you know we’re looking for Andrew?” Neil asked Jeremy out of curiosity. 

“I didn’t until I saw Kevin, and then Aaron,” Jeremy said. “After Caledonia, I figure the only way Andrew lets Kevin out of his sight is if he was nabbed. I want to help you out, I owe Andrew.” 

“Then tell me what you know about East Haven.”

“Nothing substantial, only rumors,” Jeremy hesitated, “it’s bad Neil, really bad. Only one Red ever made it to Betsy’s place and he was -- impaired somehow. They had done something to his mind, drugged him up or something but,” Jeremy said, genuinely distressed, “he was acting more like an animal than a person.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table. Kevin’s face went white and he looked like he was on the edge of being sick. Aaron got angrier and punched the paneling behind him, the plastic laminate cracking and splintering under his fist. Jeremy was distinctly uncomfortable, almost guilty seeming. He turned to Neil, sensing that he was the only stable frame of mind at the table 

“So Neil, what color are you?”

“He’s a Green,” Kevin cut in, “he’s safe.” 

“He also told me he was traveling alone,” Jeremy said without censure. Neil winced. It was never comfortable to be called out on a lie. Not much to be done about it now though, so Neil let it go. 

“What’s Betsy’s place like?” Neil asked, eager to move the conversation to less hostile topics. 

“Honestly? It’s awesome. The kids that decide to stay either work the land, teach the younger kids, or guard the property. With what I can do, I’m on perimeter watch. Betsy’s the best. She really cares about the kids as individuals, and believes in their potential. She’s risking her life by giving kids a safe place to go and when I asked her about she didn’t even bat an eye, just insisted that it was the least she could do.” 

Neil didn’t believe in saints. There must be something Betsy was getting out of it that Jeremy didn’t see. It wasn’t smart, having all those kids in one location. 

“Betsy would do anything for her kids. I think you guys will like it there.”

* * *

They drove across smattered forests for a few hours before they got to the mountain. Nicky carefully guided the RV up the mountain. The incline was gradual and then sudden as the van crested the first round. The trees started to grow diagonally, upright on the slanted slope, reaching straight for the sun. The forest became denser as they rose in elevation. The trees clustered, effectively providing cover from the road. Any houses off the mountain pass were hidden out of sight behind the treeline. 

Eventually, Nicky pulled off the pavement and onto an unmarked dirt road Neil would not have noticed if Jeremy hadn’t pointed it out. The path meandered, long and winding, between the trees. Neil saw no landmarks or distinctive features among the trees to mark the way and could not make out a path, seeing only dried nettles in the headlights. 

At least a mile in, the path emptied into a break in the trees. Beyond, a log-cabin-style house was nestled into the same valley created by the shadow of an enormous, jutting rock formation that came level with the top of the awnings. The back of the house was inaccessible due to the expanse of towering stone. A portion of the forest had grown over the rock, decorating the property with grass and threading tree vines in equal measure. Trees encroached on all sides, growing out from the cliff-sized rock itself, twisting upwards to branch over the roof of the house. Neil was intrigued by the safe house’s geographical defenses, yet weary of the ambush potential of anywhere with limited exit possibilities. 

Nicky maneuvered the car around to the front of the house to park along the exposed side. Nicky lined the van up parallel with the house, stopping just shy of a flat expanse of stone. The antennae nearly scraped a ledge of protruding stone that marked a makeshift garage. A mural of a fiery mountain sunset was painted across the flat surface of the stone, nearly as wide as the house was tall. It was beautiful. 

Jeremy had an unsettled look on his face. Neil’s stomach sank. 

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s too quiet,” Jeremy said and it was all Neil had to hear to pull his gun. “It's the middle of the day, there should be kids working in the back.” 

Neil looked out the windows and didn’t see anyone. The rest of the group collected at the door to the RV. Laila and Alvarez were as concerned as Jeremy. Aaron was eager, almost bouncing forward on his feet. Kevin and Nicky were more relaxed but no less anticipatory to learn what they could about Andrew. 

Jeremy led them by the southern perimeter and right up a long, long gravel sidewalk. Alvarez and Laila walked side by side behind him, both of them looking around pointedly, like they were expecting to see something that wasn’t there. 

“Don’t take another step.”

A kid, younger than Neil, stood in the road. He had a rifle on his back - drawing Neil’s attention immediately. His friends materialized from the woods, guns raised, and within moments they were surrounded.

“On your knees!” 

“Don’t shoot!” Nicky shrieked. One of them grabbed Nicky by the throat and threw him down, driving a boot into his stomach and shoving a gun in his face. Another rifle-wielding man the size of a gorilla barreled down at Neil, forcing him to his knees and then flat his belly at gunpoint. Kevin was punched in the face and went down, the kid from earlier standing at his head with a gun in his hand. Laila and Alvarez are treated somewhat kinder, as they are allowed the dignity of kneeling. Jeremy evaded every attempt to grab him, dodging around swipes and grabs with the same amazing footwork he had employed on the court. I took three men to subdue Jeremy and they beat his face bloody for the inconvenience. 

This was supposed to the Jeremy’s home.

They were getting a hell of a welcome. 

“That you, Kevin?”

Kevin peeked from beneath his hands and seemed to recognize the man who spoke. The dark-haired man stepped forward slowly, until he was standing over Kevin, so tall as to block out the sun with his looming shape. He looked down at Kevin, as if searching him for something. Then he helped Kevin to his feet. Neil did not recognize him. The muzzle of the rifle dug into his back pressing him into the dirt. His bewildered eyes went back and forth between Kevin and the supposed leader of the gun-toting teens. Kevin looked shocked and a little ill at ease. 

“How do you know everybody,” Nicky whispered furiously to Kevin, “what’s hottie’s name?” 

“Jean?”

“What are you doing here?” Jeremy coughed, spitting out blood, “who the hell are you people? I need to talk to Betsy.” Jeremy thrashed and fought the hands that held him down. Something was definitely wrong. People on this property were supposed to be Jeremy’s allies. What Neil learned about Betsy on the trip, the way she worked with kids in juvie and ran a virtual underground of escaped kids. A punch to the face was not her style. Whoever these people were, they weren’t working for Betsy. 

“Says who?”

The guy looked Jeremy up and down with an expression that was simultaneously judgemental and unimpressed.

“We’ll take you to the house,” Jean said, nodding at his accomplices. Neil and Nicky were hauled to their feet. Neil was tempted to touch the gorilla’s hand but thought better of it. He had no way of knowing how these people would react to his Color. They were led up to the old mansion and let in the front door. Jean shoved Kevin forward, towards a flight of stairs that terminated by the entryway. Neil and his friends were forced up the stairs and into a back room. 

“Just tell her Jeremy wants to talk.” 

“Betsy’s not here at the moment, but I’m sure I can help you,” said a mellifluous voice with an ice-cold edge. 

Neil felt the blood freeze in his veins. 

It was Riko.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a difficult chapter to write, I didn't hit flow at any point and I changed where it was going halfway through writing it. This chapter is still missing something but I'm not sure what. If something jumps out at you, please let me know! 
> 
> A huge thank you and so much gratitude to everyone who commented on the last chapter, especially those of you that shared words of encouragement and self-love. I'm doing my best to be kind to myself and find the joy in writing I once felt. 
> 
> I'll do my best to update soon. 
> 
> Thank you so much,
> 
> Shtare

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! 
> 
> This idea grabbed me when I noticed some similar themes shared by AFTG and Darkest Minds trilogies. Memorably, self-loathing/viewing self as a monster, innocence pursued by evil, a small group of misunderstood young adults, a personal revolt against the status quo, and the color orange, among others. 
> 
> I have read the books and seen the movie, so this fic will be an amalgamation of both in terms of Darkest Minds context and choice scenes - Everything else will be AFTG based or of my own invention. 
> 
> I have pretty elaborate plans for this fic. I also have responsibilities. Posting may be erratic. 
> 
> Next time, Neil will learn the truth about the Monsters journey and the whereabouts of Andrew.
> 
> Until then,
> 
> Enjoy


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